Melissa Stockwell has been a restless force of nature from the time she was a little girl speeding around her neighborhood on her bike, to her tumbles and spills as a high-level gymnast and Olympic hopeful, to joining the ROTC in college as an outlet for her patriotism and love of America.

After 9/11, she was deployed to Iraq as a commissioned Army officer, where she suffered the injury that would change her life forever. After a long and challenging recovery at Walter Reed Hospital, she exercised her power of choice to channel her energy into competition, winning three Paratriathlon World Championships and medaling at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.

Her journey weaves service to her country and the heartache of a painful divorce along with founding a successful nonprofit, launching a career in prosthetics, finding new love, and becoming a mother to two children. Along the way, she meets all the living American presidents and inspires others with disabilities—through a story that is riveting, moving, and an inspiration for anyone who would choose to live their life to the fullest.

All participants will receive a copy of Melissa’s book The Power of Choice. Sponsored by Hilltop Securities.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Central banks have come to be regarded as the “only game in town” for economic policy-making, something that the Covid-19 pandemic, the inflation of 2021-2023, and the banking crisis of 2023 made more prominent. But what are these curious institutions, where did they come from, and where are they going? This session analyzes these and related issues by providing a brief history of central banking and focusing on the ways that central banks today and in the future will dominate the landscape for banking and finance the world over. The focus will be on the Bank of England, the U.S. Federal Reserve System, and the People’s Bank of China and on any relevant topic that students wish to engage, from inflation to financial regulation, banking crises to bank capital, presidential politics and central banks in war and peace.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered on Wednesday at 8:45am

In 2024, finance professionals face a time of uncertainty on economic, financial, and geopolitical fronts. This uncertainty follows the past 27 years of frequent bouts of volatility in both economies and asset markets worldwide. We witnessed the hype of the dot.com bubble and its subsequent bursting, leading to a global recession. Central banks, including the Federal Reserve, lowered interest rates and the global economy and asset markets rebounded strongly. However, along came the debt-fueled global real estate bubble. The bursting of that speculative bubble caused a worldwide stock market crash, global financial crisis, and “Great Recession.” Investors who did not panic gained from a strong recovery in global asset markets starting in March 2009. Many real and financial assets both in the US and abroad reached record-high prices in February 2020. The high valuations led many to fear significant market risks, for example from a possible global economic slowdown or a trade war with China stemming from President’s Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

The risk that was not anticipated was public health. The pandemic led to a sudden drop in the stock market, which declined by 34% from its February 2020 peak to its trough in March 2020. The economy moved from its record-long (nearly 11 consecutive years) economic growth phase to a short but severe economic depression; a net of over 22 million US jobs were lost in March and especially in April 2020.   Massive government intervention, with unprecedented expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, restored economic growth. The massive monetary and liquidity expansion by the FED, and its creation of near-zero interest rates, fueled a rapid V-shaped rebound of the stock market. Stock market and real estate prices continued to climb to successive new highs. Economic growth surged.

Economic growth continued, but it decelerated in autumn and winter 2020-21 as a second surge of COVID infection acted as a brake. Fortunately, vaccines became available and as their distribution spread many jobs were created in service industries. Economic and job growth continued, although the delta and then Omicron variants, did slow economic growth in winter 2021-22. Still, steady growth in jobs brought the unemployment rate quite low. The surprising strength of the economy caused a level of job openings that was unprecedented and unanticipated. The tightness in the job market led to larger wage increases and combining that with global supply-chain problems led to a rise in US inflation.  Russia’s unwarranted invasion of Ukraine reduced global supplies of energy and food, accelerating inflation worldwide. This put pressure on many Central Banks to rein in their monetary and fiscal policies, leading major economies to the precipice of recession. Economic growth has stalled in Europe and the US. We heard a term from the late 1970s, stagflation. The hope is for a soft landing – most analysts did not predict it – and the FED seemed to have succeeded. We will examine the current situation, while also analyzing longer-term past trends in the economy and financial markets, all with an eye to understanding possible future trends and scenarios.

Underlying longer-term economic and financial forecasts are major demographic trends. In general, birth rates have declined significantly worldwide, plunging steeply in some nations in Europe and East Asia. Even birth rates in the US are down since the Great Recession began in 2008, with fertility rates now below the level needed to “replace” the US population absent immigration.  In the recent past, demographic trends highlighted low birth rates and consequent aging in advanced economies, contrasting with high birth rates and youthful populations in emerging markets. Global labor force growth would have to come from emerging or poorer economies.  Now, even many emerging markets have declining birth rates.  Analyzing demographic trends is crucial for investing strategy.

This session will separate fact from fiction while analyzing the implications of global forecasts and linkages for investors. The uncertainty regarding the pandemic, the U.S. and global economies, inflation, Russia/Ukraine and commodity prices, interest rates, exchange rates, job markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and the sustainability of massively increasing government debt worldwide all point toward the need for a truly global diversification strategy. This session will feature a strategic look at the economic, financial, and demographic trends that are likely to evolve in the major economies of the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Help financial professionals analyze the US and global economic outlook and longer-term economic trends in this time of great uncertainty in multiple dimensions.
• Increase participants’ understanding of global and US financial linkages to the volatile economic and policy environment we have experienced in recent decades and especially recent years.
• Portray and contrast global and U.S. demographic trends, analyzing their investment implications. We will explore forecasts of the demographic trends of the major economies such as China, the US, the EU, and India.
• The ultimate objective of this SII session is to help participants form global investing strategies based on the three preceding objectives.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

Also offered on Monday at 3:20pm

High performance requires effective execution and, for many organizations, change management. Unfortunately, major change efforts have a dismal track record. In multiple studies, highlighting the experiences of hundreds of companies initiating large-scale changes, the overwhelming results are poor. For example:

• John Kotter’s seminal research in the field of change management half a century ago revealed that only 30% of change programs succeed.
• A 2008 global IBM study of major change initiatives found that only 41% fully met their objectives, while 44% missed their budget, time, or quality goals, and 15% were seen as total failures.
• In 2013, a report that aggregated over 6,000 senior executive surveys revealed that 70% of change efforts fail to achieve their target impact.

As the Harvard Business Review’s editor articulated so well in discussing why so many transformation efforts fail:

“…no business survives over the long term if it can’t reinvent itself. But human nature being what it is, fundamental change is often resisted mightily by the people it most affects: those in the trenches of the business. Thus, leading change is both absolutely essential and incredibly difficult” (Kotter 2007).

Learning Objectives:

• Understand a 3-step process for driving execution; and
• Improve your capacity to lead change.

Pre-Class Assignment – Videos with Multiple Choice Questions

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered on Wednesday at 8:45am

In this course Professor Tiffany will review the origins of the current global economy and how recent events have called into question the sustainability of free and open markets that were a key outcome of the historically prosperous post-WWII international political economy. The presentation will be preceded by a required short video that participants view prior to arriving in Philadelphia.  The video will provide background content so that the live session can focus exclusively on current issues and allow sufficient time for participant discussion.  To facilitate this, all attendees will be required to respond to multiple-choice questions about the video content; the responses will be presented in March.

The US elections of 2016 and 2020 created a potentially profound shift in recent American economic policy, both domestic and global– and the mid-term elections of 2022 do not appear to have not altered this trajectory. In the international arena the prior President staked out positions radically different from those of the post-World War II “Bretton Woods System” engineered by the US.  This latter political-economic regime guided much of the world as “globalization” took hold and many Emerging Nations—especially China—prospered in what was termed the “Neoliberal Order.” Yet one critical result of Trump’s nationalistic “America First” agenda has been deep uncertainty about the future prospects of international trade policies, which played a significant role in the overall growth of global prosperity for the past 70 years- including in the financial services sector. And at least so far, the Biden Administration has done little to alter this path—especially with regard to US-China economic and political relations. Indeed, it is this latter issue which is driving so much of the long-term considerations about America’s economic future. The video will provide details concerning these events and, hopefully, stimulate your thoughts prior to the “live” sessions at Wharton.

March class: The class will provide a forum in which all participants will be encouraged to offer their own perspective on key issues regarding “Globalization” and its prospects going forward.  The session will begin with (a) Professor Tiffany’s explication of five key take-aways from his video commentary, (b) a review of aggregated participant responses from the mandatory multiple-choice questions, (c) brief sharing by participants of ideas and insights, and (d) an open-mic discussion about what actions might be taken next on these important issues.

Learning Objectives:

• To inform participants of the broader economic and political global trends of the recent past and how these may affect the direction of the American economy in the 21st Century going forward.
• To attempt to put the current political situation of a Biden Presidency into a framework that can provide insight into potential economic shifts in the world economy and the financial services industry.
• To stimulate participant thinking about how the changing global political-economic environment will affect economic progress in the United States in the coming decades ahead as a resurgent China makes claims for global leadership.
• To provoke a thoughtful discussion regarding the aims and goals of rival nations, such as China, and how they might affect the ability of the US to achieve its own economic and political objectives in the coming years.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 8:45am

The key to a company’s financial success is strategy execution.  Companies that have success in long term value creation have a passion for execution.  This session will use financial tools to analyze the differences between value creating and value destroying companies and show that the pattern is the same in every industry and in every part of the world. At the strategy formulation stage, it is important to select a strategy that the company understand its capabilities to execute more effectively and increase the likelihood of success. It is important to realize that profitability is necessary, but it is very fragile and it can disappear rapidly as market systems evolve. It is important to be vigilant about the changes taking place in your industry.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the financial tools that are useful in identifying value creating companies and the metrics used by investors
• Learn about companies that have tied operating metrics to financial performance to drive growth, innovation and value creation
• Learn how you can impact these key value drivers to create value for your enterprise

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered on Wednesday at 8:45am and 1:30pm

This session will explain why the Federal Reserve’s response to the Covid Pandemic has caused so much inflation and why they must look at money and market prices to determine monetary policy.  We will also examine the valuation of the market and the forecast for interest rates.

Learning Objectives:

• Effect of monetary Expansion on Inflation
• Behavior of Real Interest Rates
• Understanding historical returns on asset classes
• Determine Valuations and P-E ratios and future returns

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm

The two challenges senior leaders cite, across industries, that are amplified in the time of a global pandemic are a high level of uncertainty and the need to balance short term and long-term needs and objectives.  Leaders in financial services face similar concerns, particularly as the global pandemic has accelerated the need for a clear digital strategy. This session interactively discusses these challenges in the context of making strategic decisions effectively.  Specifically, participants are provided five best practices that are important in “normal” conditions but are absolutely critical in a VUCA environment.  Current anecdotes supplement empirical research.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the most important best practices in a very dynamic environment
• Understand the importance of establishing making a decision by developing concrete strategic decision rights
• Identify key future trends and uncertainties for the organization in order to build agility in achieving positive results

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

While providing effective solutions establishes expertise, good leadership extends beyond individual excellence.  Leaders create impact by crystalizing priorities and leveraging them to guide both themselves and others towards committed and engaged action. In this session, using interactive activities and video clips, participants will discover the transformative power of asking the right questions as a guide to shape decisions and outcomes. In addition, you will learn to identify and harness your Leadership Questions to clarify priorities, guide others and create thriving workplaces.

Learning objectives:

• Introduce the concept of “Your Leadership Question.”
• Engage in dynamic exercises exploring the impact of leadership questions.
• Strategize how to use the tool for guiding others toward shared objectives.

Check your mobile app for location.

Join German Santo Sanchez, Broadridge Chief Strategy Officer, and Michelle Jackson, Global Managing Director of Client Innovation & Engagement for a look at key trends and technologies shaping the financial services landscape in the coming year. From AI and Blockchain to ESG and investor CX, hear what experts predict will shape the industry in 2024, and what firms can do to act on them.

Attendees will leave this session with:

• Insights and data around key trends impacting the financial services industry across both the buy and sell side
• Ideas for how they and their firms can take action

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 8:45am

Public policy always impacts economies and financial markets. Such impacts are particularly pronounced now. The uncertainty surrounding trade, fiscal, geopolitical, and monetary policy is contributing to heightened market volatility.

Federal budgetary policy, termed fiscal policy, has been and increasingly will be a driving force. The pandemic cost the US 22 million jobs in March and April 2020. An expansionary fiscal policy, starting with the $2.3 trillion CARES act, helped lift the economy, but at the cost of a $3.1 trillion federal deficit in 2020 (all the deficits will be measure according to the federal fiscal year, which ends September 30). . Trillions of fiscal spending beyond the normal budget led to a further fiscal deficit of $2.8 trillion in 2021.  The federal deficit for 2022 was halved, but still massive at $1.4 trillion dollars. This smaller or improved US government deficit had a short life, as it jumped back toward $2 trillion in 2023.

This improvement was before much of the added spending coming from the infrastructure or ‘build back better’ program of President Biden.  His semiconductor subsidies will also boost the deficit. Of major importance, the increased interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve during the last two years, applied to the massive federal debt – which has leapt above $34 trillion, boosts the Government’s interest spending and thus pumps up deficit spending.

Fiscal deficits imply government borrowing, achieved by issuing more Treasury Securities. Thus, deficits add to a Gross Federal Debt that has jumped significantly to over $34 trillion. A massive increase exceeding $10 trillion from $23.5 trillion a mere four years ago!  If the deficits increase as forecast over the next decade, will the US government debt become so large that people and institutions, US and non-US, will not want to hold it? If so, bond prices would decline, market interest rates would rise, and the sustainability of the debt will become a crucial issue. Until recently, historically low interest rates have kept the US debt burden in check. However, as portrayed above, the increases in interest rates in 2022-23 engineered by the Federal Reserve boost interest payments on the federal debt and thus exacerbate the US fiscal deficit. Deficits add to debt, which must be serviced by interest payments, so the threat of a vicious circle of deficits and debt could loom.

Further, government deficits can exacerbate trade deficits. Overspending by the government can lead to overspending by the nation, including on imports. This seems to be the case in the US in recent years, and probably during recent decades.  Massive US trade deficits inspired President Trump to turn toward protectionist trade policy. Trump’s trade policies risked trade wars, especially with China, resulted in an improved “new NAFTA,” which he renamed USMCA, and added uncertainty to the financial outlook.  Biden’s trade policies mainly continue Trump’s policies. The impact on business and markets stemming from US trade policies will be analyzed.

Driving forces that could lead to more restrictive or protectionist trade policies are subsumed under the term deglobalization. The pandemic exposed the problem of globalized supply chains, aiming to achieve maximum efficiency under free trade. Now, nations and firms are focusing more on the resiliency of supply chains, to avoid dependency on foreign suppliers. Further, the US (and some other major economies) face many geopolitical risks and international “hot spots” of potential conflict. Thus, policy towards national security will be crucial. Impacts are likely to be felt during 2024 and beyond in the economy, in business opportunities, in financial markets, and in the Biden approach to foreign policy.

The overarching goal of this elective is to engage SII participants to explore relevant US policies now and in the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the evolution of fiscal policy in the U.S. Fiscal policy is a key determinant of the performance of the US economy and financial markets. Participants will develop and/or update their skills analyzing the theory and practice of fiscal policy. Real-world data and trends will enhance learning.
• Know about the path of US federal spending and fiscal deficits during both the Trump and the Biden administrations. Discuss possible future scenarios.
• International trade policy turned protectionist during the Trump administration. However, progress was then made on some fronts, such as modernizing NAFTA into the USMCA. Biden has essentially continued these policies. We will analyze how trade policy may evolve now, in the face of pressures for deglobalization.
• In our global and volatile world, key nations’ foreign policies, such as those dealing with national security and potential geopolitical conflict, take on added importance.
• Analyzing the impacts of various government policies is our ultimate objective.

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm

(Revised session from Images of Leadership; may contain some overlap)

What is your leadership style?  Do you prefer to lead by example?  Do you like to make decisions and then direct traffic?  Do you think followers come first then leaders?  Do you like to ask “What do you think?” or say “Try this” or “Come follow me?” Whether you prefer to direct or to empower others – to “push” or “pull” others along, your leadership style has consequences on your organization’s climate and productivity. With the aid of video clips as well as group and individual exercises, you will have the chance to identify various leadership styles, consider the pros and cons of each style, and reflect on your own preferences.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify various leadership styles
• Explore the pros and cons of each style
• Reflect on your preferred style

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 3:20pm

According to the World Economic Forum, we live in what is referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. Compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. It is disrupting every industry in every country and will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another.

Learning Objectives:

• Explore the unimaginable increases in computer speed and the effect it will have on your organization
• See how numerous industries are using incredibly tiny computers
• Look at how artificial intelligence and reality are changing consumer behavior
• Participate in a thought experiment about autonomous vehicles
• Discuss and debate how these various changes will directly impact your organization

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

This session will investigate why healthcare spending always goes up, what are the drivers, and what can be done about it.

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish the supply and demand side drivers of healthcare spending
• Distinguish the price and volume drivers of healthcare spending
• Investigate whether US healthcare costs rise faster than the rest of the world
• Discuss what realistically can be done to control spending (without the political rhetoric)

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 10:35am

The 21st century has and will continue to see a revolution in the way we think about money. In this session, financial historian and legal scholar Peter Conti-Brown will provide an overview of what money is, where it comes from, and where it is going. He will focus on revolutions to the payment system, including central bank digital currency, fintech innovations, and crypto currency; what new regulatory approaches to fintech will mean; and what entrepreneurial options you should watch in 2024 and beyond.

Also offered Wednesday at 1:30pm

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”, wrote Shakespeare.  Leaders often step onto stage – to present an idea, influence a decision, ask for more resources, or inspire others to action – and these experiences require practice, poise, presence, and purpose.  This session aims to understand what separates a good from a great speaking engagement and offers tangible skills to strengthen your public presence.  These skills are not only useful for large presentations with dozens or hundreds in the audience but also for smaller gatherings, client meetings, team huddles, and other crucial business interactions where public speaking can be a difference maker.  Not only will this session focus on outward-facing skills but will also help connect a leader’s public presence with their own authentic self.  While some might argue that strong public speakers possess this skill innately, this workshop will prove otherwise as we demystify the building blocks of public speaking and train ourselves to strengthen our own engagement with audiences.  By learning to be more “present,” participants will understand how to be more motivational as a leader, more convincing as a negotiator and more open and honest as a team member.  This workshop develops and utilizes a practical toolkit for leaders to continue working on their public speaking and their ability to communicate their vision and their story long after the workshop has ended.

Learning Objectives:

• To strengthen one’s own public speaking and ability to engage, motivate and inspire others.
• To develop and use an authentic presentation style.
• To recognize and overcome individual habits when connecting and engaging with audiences.

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm

Leaders inspire, build capacity in others, lead change, and motivate employees to do more than they thought possible. This session typically includes a short exercise where we watch film clips to identify inspirational leadership behaviors. Each team presents an inspiring vision and employs inspirational behaviors to respond to the crisis. Participants will discuss how visionary leaders inspire people to connect to the organization’s purpose, and understand where their particular contributions fit into the vision and how they belong to something larger than themselves.

After this session, you should be able to:

• Discuss the impact of ambiguity and uncertainty on individual psychology and performance
• Recognize the components and leader behaviors associated with inspirational leadership (that is, leadership that promotes a personal connection, builds confidence, demonstrates a caring attitude, and includes great expectations)
• Employ these behaviors in a video case and learn how to construct and effectively communicate a vision for followers.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm

Conventional wisdom is that two-thirds of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fail to meet their financial targets/business objectives, but this need not be the case! This session considers best practices in the successful implementation of mergers and acquisitions. Participants will develop a detailed framework to understand, during the valuation/bidding and preclosing stages, the strategic, cultural, and operational drivers that make an M&A deal successful. We will have an in-depth discussion of pre- and post-merger integration activities, with a particular focus on including accurate cost estimates for integration aspects in the bidding process, the tradeoffs and interdependencies that firms often encounter when implementing M&A, as well as the role of M&A experience and its relationship to firm performance. Emphasis is placed on the idea that M&A is a holistic process involving staff throughout the enterprise, that encompasses both strategic and financial considerations and that spans the entire period of time from initiation, valuation and bidding all the way through to closing, implementation and post implementation.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

This session covers macroeconomic analysis, with an emphasis on current events and policy applications. The goal is to provide the background needed to understand the broad movements in the global economy. This session can be tailored to cover specific topics such as national income accounting, long-run economic growth, technological changes, the labor market, business cycles, inflation, interest rates, monetary and fiscal policy, international trade and investment, exchange rates and international finance.

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm and Thursday at 10:35am

Effective leaders recognize they must carefully manage both the external and internal environment.  They inspire, provide clarity of purpose, seek diversity of thought and contrary views, and build a culture of trust.  Leaders also develop a keen awareness of external forces and turn threats into opportunities by building an organizational capability of adaptability.  In short, leaders build a PERCEPTIVE organization that is poised to achieve and maintain sustainable positive results.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the importance of building a perceptive organization to meet today’s business challenges
• Articulate specific leadership behaviors that can create an appropriate vigilant culture
• Better prepare for an uncertain future by building agility into their strategy

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Quantum computers have moved from science fiction to science fact in just the last few years, and they are close to creating a “cryptographically relevant quantum computer” that can defeat the current PKI encryption standards that defend the global financial ecosystem.   A race is underway now to define new standards of encryption that will withstand a quantum assault, and further have products built, systems upgraded, and new ‘crypto agility’ capabilities propagated throughout entire enterprises.  Learn what steps financial companies are taking now, to both prepare for the near future, and defend against the latest “steal now, decrypt later” attacks underway today.  This class will provide an overview of the risks and rewards of quantum computing, and lay out the eight step process that financial companies are starting today to ensure they are defended against what the Financial Times called ‘Encryptogeddon.’

Also offered Tuesday at 8:45am and Thursday at 8:45am

In this session we will introduce a scenario-based methodology for strategic planning under conditions of high uncertainty.  Topics covered will include:

• Why great companies fail and how successful firms respond to change
• The value of optionality and peripheral vision
• The need for challenging old mental models
• Capturing strategic uncertainty through scenarios
• Choosing the right battles through strategic segmentation
• Developing a strategic vision from robust, flexible capabilities

Learning Objectives:

• To recognize the pitfalls associated with planning for a single future
• To learn a systematic process that enables the construction of future industry scenarios
• To learn how to use scenarios in developing strategic competencies and options

Also offered Wednesday at 1:30pm

Recent academic work on the science of innovation and creativity has revealed a new, evidence-based approach to coming up with new ideas and solving problems – but it is one that is not widely known outside of academia! In this session, we will first discuss these new approaches to innovating, including a number of simple tips and common mistakes. Then, in the second half of the session, you will play the Breakthrough Game, which allows you to apply the tools you learned to use in a fun and engaging way. Playing the Breakthrough Game, participants not only solve one particular challenge as a team but also, crucially, learn how to drive the innovation process in the future.

You will come out of this session with short-term takeaways that will make your future idea generation sessions more productive, an actionable idea that you can pursue, and a general framework that you can use to solve problems and search for new opportunities.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

The idea that innovation comes only from startups and entrepreneurs is a myth.  Employee innovators, also known as Intrapreneurs, are responsible for 70% of the most transformative innovations of the past three decades.

In our accelerated world of technology and disruption, the benefits of turning employees into Intrapreneurs are well documented. Companies that treat their people as Intrapreneurs have innovation infused into their DNA. Transformation becomes a toned muscle and capability that can be exercised repeatedly as needed. Best-selling author and globally ranked innovation expert Kaihan Krippendorff’s research shows companies with active Intrapreneur networks are 3X more likely to be in the top quintile of financial performance and enjoy a 2.5X advantage in their ability to recruit and retain top talent.

The IN-OVATE framework provides a specific and practical approach to turn your employees into Intrapreneurs, and build capacity for enterprise-wide transformation and smart innovation.

IN-OVATE Framework Summary – Turn Employees into Intrapreneurs

• Intent – Can you activate employees to have the intent to innovate?
• Need – Do you understand what the market needs, what the organization needs, and your organization’s strategy?
• Options – Are you able to create lots of interesting options, ie., do you have the creative capacity to generate ideas for innovation?
• Value Blockers – Are you able to overcome value blockers if the new idea conflicts with your current business model?
• Act – Can you take action and experiment or prototype your ideas?
• Team – Can you assemble a cross-functional team that has the right attributes needed to ramp up the innovation quickly?
• Environment – Can you manage environmental factors (leadership, culture, structure, and talent)?

In this inspiring, timely, and high-impact session, Kaihan shows how organizations can unlock the power of Intrapreneurship, and how you, the individual Intrapreneur, can navigate barriers, overcome resistance, and take the initiative to drive transformation across your organization.

The audience will leave with:

• A framework to identify and overcome the seven blockers of innovation
• The six characteristics, mindsets, and habits of successful Intrapreneurs
• Appreciation and understanding of the human side of innovation and how to spread Intrapreneurship across the organization
• Inspiring and memorable stories to fuel their Intrapreneurial journey

This session will involve an experiential case where participants will play the role of a board facing an unexpected and shocking ethical crisis.  The case is episodic, allowing participants to make decisions as they obtain new information.  The case will provide participants an opportunity to grapple with important contemporary issues including, i) how to balance stakeholder and shareholder interests, ii) how leaders balance considerations of transparency and control when faced with damaging internal information, iii) how to structure an internal corporate investigation, and iv) how to determine whether an ethical lapse is an individual versus organizational issue.   A former federal prosecutor will join Professor McDonnell in debriefing the case to shed additional light on its legal and investigative components.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

The ability to negotiate productively is a critical part of both business and personal success. In this interactive session we will conduct a negotiation that is both fun and challenging.  The negotiation simulation will highlight several key concepts in negotiation, assist you in thinking about negotiation strategically, and help you improve the outcomes of your future negotiations. In addition, we will identify what your negotiation style is and the pros and cons of using it in different situations.

Pre-Class Assignment – Assessment

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 1:30pm and Thursday at 1:30pm

This workshop will help strengthen your influence and persuasion skills.  Everybody needs these skills to build momentum for important initiatives, achieve organizational alignment, and implement strategies. Through a series of interactive discussions and role-plays, you will answer four key questions in this workshop: What are the steps that led to buy-in?  What is your communication style and how do you use to engage stakeholders?  How do you make your ideas simple and compelling? How do you generate lasting commitment? The workshop content is drawn from the book The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin), co-authored by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa. This class will require pre-work to be completed prior to the participants’ arrival.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the different channels of influence and how to use them effectively.
• Optimize each message so that it resonates stakeholders’ style and interests.
• Assess your progress on real problems you bring to the workshop and position yourself to see immediate results.
• Map the political landscape of your organization to see where the landmines are buried and where your allies can help you.
• Experience enhanced self-awareness, including emotional intelligence.
• Enhance the ability to assemble winning coalitions.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Design thinking is a customer / user-centric approach used for solving business challenges by working in collaborative, diverse teams and employing an accelerated rapid prototyping / test and learn sprint format.  This approach can be used to solve for both customer engagement and operational challenges. In fact, the design thinking approach and mindset can be targeted towards nearly all business challenges. The best way to learn about adopting design thinking is to “just do it”. This extended and interactive participation session will actively demonstrate the application of design thinking to solve for a challenge statement which will have been previously identified by SII participants. Participants will work together in small teams facilitated by Elixirr’s design thinking experts to design, rapidly prototype and peer test a solution.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding of the key principles and concepts of design thinking, as well as how it can be used within the enterprise to design, develop, and launch new propositions to market and / or to drive operational efficiencies and better user experiences in-house
• First-hand experience of how to apply the design thinking approach to challenges within Financial Services (which participants can adopt immediately after)
• Insight into how to solve for a specific and relevant challenge statement (which will be identified by SII members) – this includes challenge statement development, researching key trends / pain points / opportunities, using outside-in thinking of “what good looks like” to inspire the solution design process, rapid prototyping sprints, customer testing, iterative design, and pitching a solution

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

You can’t drive a car looking in the rear view mirror.  Traditional metrics are backward looking.  They keep score. What did you do last month, last quarter and last year?  Companies need to keep score to assess performance: growth, margin, return on equity, and total shareholder return are common metrics.  They do not tell you how the company will do in the future. Value is about the future.  In the age of agile, companies need to increasingly start putting forward looking and predictive metrics on their dashboards.  The Agile Dashboard was researched and developed to help organizations address this gap. The Agile Dashboard looks at three categories of metrics: Speed, Interaction Time and Pivot. These are critical elements for leaders to monitor whether their organizations are prepared to operate successfully in an uncertain future.  This session will explain each of the three sections of the Agile Dashboard, provide metrics for each and share examples of their applicability to financial organizations.

Also offered Wednesday at 10:35am

The very idea of holding someone to account tends to make people bristle with apprehension and fear regardless of whether they are the one holding or the one being held to account. If your goal is to help a direct report meet deadlines or to collaborate more effectively with a team member, it’s vital to create high levels of both personal and mutual accountability.

Learning Objectives:

• Discover how to build more trust
• Understand the importance of setting clear expectations
• Examine why there is a lack of accountability
• Learn how to create more psychological safety
• Review how to give effective feedback
• Grasp why praise and celebration are essential to accountability

Also offered Tuesday at 8:45am

(Previously titled Resilience and Optimism)

This session will discuss the science of resilience and well-being and teach actionable skills to navigate adversity and thrive in challenging environments. During this interactive session, attendees will discuss ways to apply the strategies in their professional as well as their personal lives.

Learning objectives:

• Resilience is the capacity to navigate adversity and to grow through the struggles we face.
• The factors that contribute to resilience.
• The benefits of optimism in important domains of life, including relationships, health, and performance.
• Six optimism strategies to increase resilience and build an optimistic mindset.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

(Previously titled Building Better Retirement Systems in the Wake of the Global Pandemic)

The pandemic has accentuated stresses on global aging, requiring policymakers and retirees to become newly aware of the need for better risk management tools to handle longevity and aging. I will evaluate how retirement systems have fared in the wake of the pandemic, and examine insurance and financial market products that may render retirement systems more resilient for the world’s aging population.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key elements of retirement system in the US and globally
• Evaluate challenges facing retirement systems in the future
• Discuss proposals to enhance retirement security

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm

(Revised session from Images of Leadership; may contain some overlap)

What is your leadership style?  Do you prefer to lead by example?  Do you like to make decisions and then direct traffic?  Do you think followers come first then leaders?  Do you like to ask “What do you think?” or say “Try this” or “Come follow me?” Whether you prefer to direct or to empower others – to “push” or “pull” others along, your leadership style has consequences on your organization’s climate and productivity. With the aid of video clips as well as group and individual exercises, you will have the chance to identify various leadership styles, consider the pros and cons of each style, and reflect on your own preferences.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify various leadership styles
• Explore the pros and cons of each style
• Reflect on your preferred style

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Impact and ESG investing has skyrocketed in popularity with investors worldwide. But many people don’t realize how wide-ranging these disciplines have become.  Twenty years ago it was stock or occasionally other portfolios which screened companies in or out based on their social investing characteristics. Today, ESG and social-impact oriented strategies include new products and asset classes, influencing corporate governance through shareholder activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Donor-Advised Funds, and bold for-profit approaches to helping the poor in the developing world.

This session provides an overview of the most important ESG and impact-investing concepts and styles and a look at whether investment return need be sacrificed for social benefit.  It offers a high-level view of the products and strategies now permeating not only institutional, but retail investing as well.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

Also offered Monday at 10:35am

High performance requires effective execution and, for many organizations, change management. Unfortunately, major change efforts have a dismal track record. In multiple studies, highlighting the experiences of hundreds of companies initiating large-scale changes, the overwhelming results are poor. For example:

• John Kotter’s seminal research in the field of change management half a century ago revealed that only 30% of change programs succeed.
• A 2008 global IBM study of major change initiatives found that only 41% fully met their objectives, while 44% missed their budget, time, or quality goals, and 15% were seen as total failures.
• In 2013, a report that aggregated over 6,000 senior executive surveys revealed that 70% of change efforts fail to achieve their target impact.

As the Harvard Business Review’s editor articulated so well in discussing why so many transformation efforts fail:

“…no business survives over the long term if it can’t reinvent itself. But human nature being what it is, fundamental change is often resisted mightily by the people it most affects: those in the trenches of the business. Thus, leading change is both absolutely essential and incredibly difficult” (Kotter 2007).

Learning Objectives:

• Understand a 3-step process for driving execution; and
• Improve your capacity to lead change.

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm

Leaders inspire, build capacity in others, lead change, and motivate employees to do more than they thought possible. This session typically includes a short exercise where we watch film clips to identify inspirational leadership behaviors. Each team presents an inspiring vision and employs inspirational behaviors to respond to the crisis. Participants will discuss how visionary leaders inspire people to connect to the organization’s purpose, and understand where their particular contributions fit into the vision and how they belong to something larger than themselves.

After this session, you should be able to:

• Discuss the impact of ambiguity and uncertainty on individual psychology and performance
• Recognize the components and leader behaviors associated with inspirational leadership (that is, leadership that promotes a personal connection, builds confidence, demonstrates a caring attitude, and includes great expectations)
• Employ these behaviors in a video case and learn how to construct and effectively communicate a vision for followers.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm

Conventional wisdom is that two-thirds of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fail to meet their financial targets/business objectives, but this need not be the case! This session considers best practices in the successful implementation of mergers and acquisitions. Participants will develop a detailed framework to understand, during the valuation/bidding and preclosing stages, the strategic, cultural, and operational drivers that make an M&A deal successful. We will have an in-depth discussion of pre- and post-merger integration activities, with a particular focus on including accurate cost estimates for integration aspects in the bidding process, the tradeoffs and interdependencies that firms often encounter when implementing M&A, as well as the role of M&A experience and its relationship to firm performance. Emphasis is placed on the idea that M&A is a holistic process involving staff throughout the enterprise, that encompasses both strategic and financial considerations and that spans the entire period of time from initiation, valuation and bidding all the way through to closing, implementation and post implementation.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

This session provides a broad survey of economic trends affecting firms, markets, and investors. It should help participants understand current events in the economy and markets and incorporate them in their decision-making. The core session discusses the outlook for the three main economic powers: US, China and Europe. Coverage of emerging markets or particular countries and regions can be added in extended or customized versions of this session. Learning Objectives: After this session, you should: Understand the outlook for the U.S. economy and its main economic challenges both in the near term and at longer horizons Understand the outlook and challenges in for China and Europe Discuss and form reasonable expectations about the prospects for interest rates, equity prices and exchange rates in the near term.

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm and Thursday at 10:35am

Effective leaders recognize they must carefully manage both the external and internal environment.  They inspire, provide clarity of purpose, seek diversity of thought and contrary views, and build a culture of trust.  Leaders also develop a keen awareness of external forces and turn threats into opportunities by building an organizational capability of adaptability.  In short, leaders build a PERCEPTIVE organization that is poised to achieve and maintain sustainable positive results.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the importance of building a perceptive organization to meet today’s business challenges
• Articulate specific leadership behaviors that can create an appropriate vigilant culture
• Better prepare for an uncertain future by building agility into their strategy

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

American society is transforming. It’s aging. And with aging, we accumulate more and more wealth. In time, we need that wealth for our well-being, pleasure, and legacy. With aging, we’re also more likely to experience cognitive impairments. Persons with cognitive impairment need care, but there are fewer and fewer people available to care for them, especially the free labor of close by family. Persons with cognitive impairment are at heightened risk to make errors in financial management or be victims of financial fraud or abuse. Together, these facts distill a powerful brew of challenges for older adults, their families, medicine and the banking and financial services industries. This course will overview the common causes of cognitive complaints and cognitive impairment and the latest initiatives to improve the diagnosis and care of these disorders, and to address fraud and abuse. Particular attention will be paid to issues at the intersections of cognitive health and wealth. These include understanding what are the causes of cognitive problems, and how they impact of financial capacity. A smart firm will strive to practice “whealthcare” (learn more at www.whealthcare.org). The lecturer will examine how a firm might achieve this through staff training, effective communication with clients and their families (especially in light of FINRA rule 4512), and deploying novel technologies to monitor and detect changes in financial capacity, and as well, fraud and abuse. The class will have a look into the future of the monitored brain. Attendees will leave inspired to make changes in the ways they conduct business so that they can better serve the health and wealth of the older clients and their families.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand what are the meanings of common terms: dementia (its stages), Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive impairment (including mild cognitive impairment) and caregivers.
• Recognize how financial capacity is among the earliest signs of cognitive impairments and the opportunities to design and conduct your business so that it serves the health and wealth of an aging America.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Exercise

Leaders and their organizations flourish when guided by a clear understanding of the “Why” and “What” they aim to achieve.  The challenge often lies in aligning these objectives while achieving stakeholder needs and requests.  Many leaders find themselves grappling with the Herculean task of balancing their goals and values while striving for outstanding outcomes. This session addresses the critical leadership hurdle:  discerning what not to do without compromising critical objectives or values.  Many leaders find this to be their core leadership challenge. Therefore, having direction with clarity enables navigating when and what to say no to and avoiding the trap of “busyness” where distractions and “to do” lists lead the way. This interactive session introduces a structured approach using participants’ own examples and small group collaboration.  The primary focus of this session is on identifying what can be relinquished to enhance the chances of successfully achieving key priorities and overcoming biases that hinder such decisions.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key priorities in your current role.
• Letting go of priorities that hinder progress.
• Engage in planning how to share with others on your teams.

Sponsored by Edward D. Jones & Co., L.P.

Join fellow SII participants and the SII Board of Trustees for a networking reception.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Recognizing the increasing importance of latent sources of non-market risk stemming from social and political uncertainty, firms are facing increased calls to consider the interests of stakeholders, in addition to shareholders, when making strategic decisions.  This class will guide participants through a hands-on, episodic case that explores a company’s decision to re-incorporate abroad for tax savings.  The case illustrates the complexity and importance of analyzing and understanding the non-market (social, legal, and political) risks attendant to strategic decisions.  Participants will learn frameworks for assessing non-market risk, balancing the interests of shareholders with those of key stakeholders, and the critical role of governance frameworks for allocating power between shareholders and stakeholders.

This session is an introduction to real world application of the emerging field of “decision science” which lies at the confluence of behavioral economics and neuroscience and deals with better understanding the limits of rationality of human leaders as decision makers.  The focus is on understanding common biases and heuristics that “rationality” of decisions, the impact that personal power has on these decision processes, and how to structure organizations and processes to minimize the negative impacts of them.  Using both short practical exercises to highlight the limits of human rationality within all of us and real-world examples of bounded rationality, we hope to explore how best to work with and overcome these very human realities.  The presenter is a retired Army major general and recent resident faculty at Harvard Kennedy School, who has over three decades of decision-making experience and observations of top-level leaders.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand limits to human rationality in decision making.
• Learn individual and organizational techniques to improve quality of decision making.
• Apply these concepts in the world of complex organizational leadership.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm

Public policy always impacts economies and financial markets. Such impacts are particularly pronounced now. The uncertainty surrounding trade, fiscal, geopolitical, and monetary policy is contributing to heightened market volatility.

Federal budgetary policy, termed fiscal policy, has been and increasingly will be a driving force. The pandemic cost the US 22 million jobs in March and April 2020. An expansionary fiscal policy, starting with the $2.3 trillion CARES act, helped lift the economy, but at the cost of a $3.1 trillion federal deficit in 2020 (all the deficits will be measure according to the federal fiscal year, which ends September 30). . Trillions of fiscal spending beyond the normal budget led to a further fiscal deficit of $2.8 trillion in 2021.  The federal deficit for 2022 was halved, but still massive at $1.4 trillion dollars. This smaller or improved US government deficit had a short life, as it jumped back toward $2 trillion in 2023.

This improvement was before much of the added spending coming from the infrastructure or ‘build back better’ program of President Biden.  His semiconductor subsidies will also boost the deficit. Of major importance, the increased interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve during the last two years, applied to the massive federal debt – which has leapt above $34 trillion, boosts the Government’s interest spending and thus pumps up deficit spending.

Fiscal deficits imply government borrowing, achieved by issuing more Treasury Securities. Thus, deficits add to a Gross Federal Debt that has jumped significantly to over $34 trillion. A massive increase exceeding $10 trillion from $23.5 trillion a mere four years ago!  If the deficits increase as forecast over the next decade, will the US government debt become so large that people and institutions, US and non-US, will not want to hold it? If so, bond prices would decline, market interest rates would rise, and the sustainability of the debt will become a crucial issue. Until recently, historically low interest rates have kept the US debt burden in check. However, as portrayed above, the increases in interest rates in 2022-23 engineered by the Federal Reserve boost interest payments on the federal debt and thus exacerbate the US fiscal deficit. Deficits add to debt, which must be serviced by interest payments, so the threat of a vicious circle of deficits and debt could loom.

Further, government deficits can exacerbate trade deficits. Overspending by the government can lead to overspending by the nation, including on imports. This seems to be the case in the US in recent years, and probably during recent decades.  Massive US trade deficits inspired President Trump to turn toward protectionist trade policy. Trump’s trade policies risked trade wars, especially with China, resulted in an improved “new NAFTA,” which he renamed USMCA, and added uncertainty to the financial outlook.  Biden’s trade policies mainly continue Trump’s policies. The impact on business and markets stemming from US trade policies will be analyzed.

Driving forces that could lead to more restrictive or protectionist trade policies are subsumed under the term deglobalization. The pandemic exposed the problem of globalized supply chains, aiming to achieve maximum efficiency under free trade. Now, nations and firms are focusing more on the resiliency of supply chains, to avoid dependency on foreign suppliers. Further, the US (and some other major economies) face many geopolitical risks and international “hot spots” of potential conflict. Thus, policy towards national security will be crucial. Impacts are likely to be felt during 2024 and beyond in the economy, in business opportunities, in financial markets, and in the Biden approach to foreign policy.

The overarching goal of this elective is to engage SII participants to explore relevant US policies now and in the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the evolution of fiscal policy in the U.S. Fiscal policy is a key determinant of the performance of the US economy and financial markets. Participants will develop and/or update their skills analyzing the theory and practice of fiscal policy. Real-world data and trends will enhance learning.
• Know about the path of US federal spending and fiscal deficits during both the Trump and the Biden administrations. Discuss possible future scenarios.
• International trade policy turned protectionist during the Trump administration. However, progress was then made on some fronts, such as modernizing NAFTA into the USMCA. Biden has essentially continued these policies. We will analyze how trade policy may evolve now, in the face of pressures for deglobalization.
• In our global and volatile world, key nations’ foreign policies, such as those dealing with national security and potential geopolitical conflict, take on added importance.
• Analyzing the impacts of various government policies is our ultimate objective.

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm

(Previously titled Resilience and Optimism)

This session will discuss the science of resilience and well-being and teach actionable skills to navigate adversity and thrive in challenging environments. During this interactive session, attendees will discuss ways to apply the strategies in their professional as well as their personal lives.

Learning objectives:

• Resilience is the capacity to navigate adversity and to grow through the struggles we face.
• The factors that contribute to resilience.
• The benefits of optimism in important domains of life, including relationships, health, and performance.
• Six optimism strategies to increase resilience and build an optimistic mindset.

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Video

Also offered Thursday at 3:20pm

As organizations become more complex and global, many senior leaders struggle to “think globally but act locally”. At the heart of this challenge is the need to understand the enterprise system, and cascade that understanding throughout the organization. This session explores the barriers to “enterprise thinking” and breaking down organizational silos. The participants are then given various concepts and tools to promote a stronger enterprise mindset, including those that address clarity, alignment, culture and accountability.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify elements that contribute to the “silo” mentality
• Utilize tools to promote clarity and accountability
• Understand behaviors that lead to a learning culture

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 1:30pm and Thursday at 1:30pm

Creating a good business case is necessary to help leaders make good decisions on allocating resources.  A good business plan is also a blueprint for success.  This module will explain the key elements of a business case and discuss how to evaluate and measure business impact.  Four key elements such as the market and business opportunity, link to competitive advantage, communicating a business / economic / operating model and ability to implement will be discussed.  A shark-tank like exercise will be used as a case exercise to give practice on developing executive summaries of ideas to be funded. We will also explore the concept of risk to understand and communicate the uncertainties of a business case using a real world case example.  This will be a practical session focused on the qualitative elements that can be used to better inform and evaluate the business cases you submit and review.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

As Steve Lohr writes in an article on Microsoft, “One of the evolutionary laws of business is that success breeds failure; the tactics and habits of earlier triumphs so often leave companies–even the biggest, most profitable and most admired companies–unable to adapt.”  Clearly, sustained competitive advantage, Michael Porter’s definition of “strategy”, is difficult to attain, especially in these increasingly uncertain times.  In this highly interactive seminar, Mr. Austin will outline key frameworks for identifying innovative, new avenues for growth.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the difference between “inside-out” vs. “outside-in” thinking and what it means to be “customer-centric”.
• Identify obstacles to strategic growth and approaches for overcoming.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Throughout history and up to today’s higher rate environment, the fixed income market has been a central way public and private entities access capital to fund their operation. The unique structure of tax law combined with the benefits of leverage lead many firms and individuals to borrow as a way to increase shareholder wealth.  In this session we will review fixed income market basics on bond math, risks, and tradeoffs, who issues debt and why, and how the OTC bond markets operate.   We follow this up by looking at the current state of the fixed income marketplace by examining the current level of yields in the market, credit spreads, volatility, risk, and factors that affect investors in the bond market from individuals to SVB.

Learning Objectives:

• Review on Fixed Income on pricing basics, risks, and the bond market
• Understand who issues debt and why, and who buys debt and why.
• Examine the current market environment from higher rates to increased volatility.
• Review a few specific recent events in the fixed income market and their impact.

Pre-Class Assignment – Survey

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm

This session focuses on a strengths-based approach to leadership at and outside of work. Using tools developed through decades of research, hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, and millions of surveys, this body of knowledge is unique and provides answers to questions like who do I need to be? and what does it mean to come from a position of strength? Focusing on what is wrong, areas of weakness, or things that need to be improved can only take us so far, combined with what’s working well, our strengths, we can harness a lot more potential. This session takes a deep dive into the language of strengths and how to apply them.

Participants will learn:

• What a strengths-based approach is.
• The difference between existing strength based approaches.
• How strengths play a part in our well-being by helping us feel better and function more effectively.
• Obtain a rank ordering of their strengths and how to interpret their results.

In the VUCA world change is a constant.  The COVID pandemic was a stark reminder how important are leaders who know how to lead change and not just manage a change process.  In the session, we will identify key change leadership roles and opportunities as well as how to overcome the obstacles. Using examples, discussion and video clips we also explore how employees experience change, and how leaders can guide them through the change process while providing growth opportunities.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key leadership roles for creating effective change.
• Introduce and use a framework to help guide you through the process of organizational change.
• Have an effective plan to overcome the challenges of changing people’s behaviors.

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm and Thursday at 8:45am

In this session we will introduce a scenario-based methodology for strategic planning under conditions of high uncertainty.  Topics covered will include:

• Why great companies fail and how successful firms respond to change
• The value of optionality and peripheral vision
• The need for challenging old mental models
• Capturing strategic uncertainty through scenarios
• Choosing the right battles through strategic segmentation
• Developing a strategic vision from robust, flexible capabilities

Learning Objectives:

• To recognize the pitfalls associated with planning for a single future
• To learn a systematic process that enables the construction of future industry scenarios
• To learn how to use scenarios in developing strategic competencies and options

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

The session will focus on how leaders can build high flying teams that enable them to implement their strategies successfully, with special attention to the challenges of managing teams that are dispersed, diverse, digital, and dynamic. We will introduce a tool for analyzing your own teams, the Team Effectiveness Pyramid, and work through how to use this tool to diagnose your teams and figure out how and where to intervene to make them stronger.

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Exercise

Also offered Tuesday at 1:30pm

Perhaps the most important responsibility for any manager is to help their people grow and reach their potential.  Coaching direct reports on a regular basis is a condition of employment at many companies for any manager.

Yet our research concludes that managers rarely coach their people, particularly in the rapid moving financial services industry.  What makes this even more troubling is that most people crave feedback from their managers—even if it is negative.

In a virtual environment this becomes even more challenging.

This session will introduce a specific coaching model and the skills required to make it work.  Participants will learn how to plan, conduct and follow-up coaching sessions.  They will learn how to collect data, how to position these sessions, how to provide balanced feedback, how to manage the inevitable push back and how to gain commitment.  And the session will consistently refer to conducting these sessions remotely.

Managers often say they don’t coach their people because they aren’t comfortable in this role.  Too often they coach they way they parent or how they were coached in sports, dance or the arts.  This session will explain how to be an effective coach in business situations, and the practice exercises will demonstrate how it is all applicable and manageable.

Learning Objectives:

• Become familiar with a specific coaching model to apply to any coaching session.
• Learn the specific skills associated with coaching like providing feedback, managing resistance, and gaining commitment.
• Explore how to offer individuals specific ways and means to improve their performance.
• Determine how to deal with the challenges of coaching people in virtual conversations.
• Investigate how to prepare and follow-up coaching sessions to ensure that behavior change actually happens.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm

While technology is always changing, there are three key areas to focus on that will have a major impact on you, your company, your industry, and your country over the rest of your career.  Learn what they are, why they matter, their latest advances, and what decisions you can make now that will be the difference between success and failure going forward. Whole new ways to compute, communicate, and decision are coming, and with them will be great risks and great opportunity.  Get informed, involved, and advanced with the security aspects of Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, and 5G communications in this fast-paced class.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm

In a world of escalated uncertainty, how do we plan and execute a growth mindset? This session combines established fundamentals and forward-looking frameworks to help managers deliver innovative growth under conditions of high-uncertainty. Participants will be engaged in discussions and presented with examples & tools to aid with the translation from classroom to operations. Key takeaways: Participants will be able to discern between revenue & value; risk & uncertainty; and necessary versus alpha-seeking innovation plays.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

The state of the global economy is entirely dependent on the lens that one views it through.  Many of the world’s central banks have cooled inflation measurably without recessionary growth shocks, and a return to respective inflation targets is possible in 2024. Still, mixed signals, such as positive earnings expectations at odds with an inverted yield curve, foster a wide dispersion of macro views. Through a balanced assessment of the full picture, we believe the hard part is over.

Importantly, our optimism around the avoidance of a global recession should not be confused with a full risk-on tilt. Rather, a balanced portfolio of equities, fixed income, and alternatives may serve as a hedge to inflation and growth risks, while maintaining robust return targets. We expect 2024 to mark the beginning of the return to a normalized investing environment.

In this session, we explore how investors may capitalize on a resilient macro backdrop while also accounting for tail risks, with emphasis on:

• Navigating a higher interest rate regime with balanced equity and core fixed income positioning.
• Positioning for a potentially turbulent US election year that may feature heightened market volatility.
• Adding the potential risk-reduction benefits of liquid alternatives while maintaining competitive return targets.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the current state of the macro economy and the markets
• Recognize trends that may continue to fuel the recovery going forward
• Explore actionable investment themes

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CLE®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm

This session will simulate a real securities arbitration. Participants will watch a condensed proceeding based on common investor disputes, with experienced trial attorneys playing the roles of Claimant’s and Respondents’ counsel. A discussion of case, and of best practices to prevent litigation and client disputes, will follow. Participants will receive a one-page background fact document prior to attending this session.

Learning Objectives:

• Evaluate the pros and cons of this method of dispute resolution and understand how arbitration differs from court litigation.
• See, up close and personal, the arbitration process from opening statements to conclusion.
• Learn what issues create problems for investors, financial firms, investment professionals and supervisory/compliance/risk and support personnel.
• Learn how to avoid problems that lead to arbitration and keep records to assist in defending claims.

Pre-Class Assignment – Questionnaire

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

The ability to negotiate productively is a critical part of both business and personal success. In this interactive session we will identify what your negotiation style is and the pros and cons of using it in certain situations.  In addition, we will conduct a mock negotiation that is both fun and challenging.  The mock negotiation will highlight several key concepts in negotiation, assist you in thinking about negotiation strategically, and help you improve the outcomes of your future negotiations.

Check your mobile app for location.

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm

Participants will be on their feet for part of this session

Participants will learn how to build an adaptive, innovative team culture through learning a cutting-edge technique called the “After Action Review.” The After Action Review (AAR) is used by many organizations, including the United Nations, Microsoft, Harley Davidson, Navy Seals, to enhance commitment, focus on continuous improvement and sharing best practices across teams and organizations. Leaders can leverage the AAR to implement and reinforce change efforts, improve process execution, shape culture and influence employees to learn from past performance. Participants will learn how to conduct an effective After Action Review and will participate in the “Crossing the River” exercise—an engaging, fun and practical application of adaptive leadership in a challenging environment.

Learning Objectives

• Bring new insights and approaches to your team strategy development, innovation and execution
• Utilize the After Action Review Process to create the optimal balance of learning and performance on your teams
• Better understand your own and others’ leadership styles, and how to be a more adaptive leader
• Develop a collaborative, open, candid, innovative team learning environment
• Help your team respond more positively and creatively to external challenges

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

A post-pandemic silver lining is the surge in number of women investors. Over the past few years, women have become more engaged in their finances, motivated by the build-up of excess wealth following significant pandemic fiscal transfers, the shift to hybrid work that has freed up time to invest, and the need to grow earnings as economic conditions became ambiguous. As a result, financial platforms with low barriers to investing saw the fastest rise in new account openings at the turn of this decade. We think this momentum will continue, further pushing the envelope on the composition of investors towards a younger, more diverse, and more female audience. Looking at the decade ahead, the Boston Consulting Group expects women’s wealth to grow $5 trillion globally every year.

In this course, we will examine the investor discipline and market realities of retirement savings. We then will explore the additional trifecta of challenges that women tend to face further fueling the investment gap. We end with potential strategies to help bridge the female investing gap.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the surge in women investors
• Exploring the realities of retirement savings and the increasing investment gap
• Examining solutions to bridge the female investing gap

Business, as usual, no longer exists. As US General Eric Shinseki once said, “If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.” Constant disruption, at an ever-increasing pace, creates a great deal of anxiety and stress. To survive and even thrive in this pressure-filled environment, individuals, and organizations must increase their AQ (Adaptability Quotient.)

From a business standpoint, AQ is the ability of your organization to be agile and adjust course in response to unexpected shifts in the marketplace. On a personal level, AQ measures your ability to react quickly and effectively to change and bounce back in the face of failure.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to increase your AQ
• Examine the role of curiosity
• Realize the importance of flexible thinking
• Explore the idea of realistic optimism
• Understand the key components of resilience and how to apply them

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Exercise

Also offered Tuesday at 10:35am

Perhaps the most important responsibility for any manager is to help their people grow and reach their potential.  Coaching direct reports on a regular basis is a condition of employment at many companies for any manager.

Yet our research concludes that managers rarely coach their people, particularly in the rapid moving financial services industry.  What makes this even more troubling is that most people crave feedback from their managers—even if it is negative.

In a virtual environment this becomes even more challenging.

This session will introduce a specific coaching model and the skills required to make it work.  Participants will learn how to plan, conduct and follow-up coaching sessions.  They will learn how to collect data, how to position these sessions, how to provide balanced feedback, how to manage the inevitable push back and how to gain commitment.  And the session will consistently refer to conducting these sessions remotely.

Managers often say they don’t coach their people because they aren’t comfortable in this role.  Too often they coach they way they parent or how they were coached in sports, dance or the arts.  This session will explain how to be an effective coach in business situations, and the practice exercises will demonstrate how it is all applicable and manageable.

Learning Objectives:

• Become familiar with a specific coaching model to apply to any coaching session.
• Learn the specific skills associated with coaching like providing feedback, managing resistance, and gaining commitment.
• Explore how to offer individuals specific ways and means to improve their performance.
• Determine how to deal with the challenges of coaching people in virtual conversations.
• Investigate how to prepare and follow-up coaching sessions to ensure that behavior change actually happens.

Courage is a powerful key leadership characteristic, irrespective of one’s formal role.  It requires engagement and acting in support of purpose, in the face of concern, worry or fear.  In organizations we want to be courageous, to do what we believe is right and have positive impact, while still acting in pursuit of achieving the organization’s vision. Courage means navigating without a pre-existing roadmap and is an ability that can be learned. Knowing why and when courageous actions are important promotes being proactive.

In this session, initial steps are formulated to help create a clearer sense of personal priorities regarding where and how one would like to take courageous organizational action(s). Through organizational examples and short exercises, participants identify when to act more courageously and how to do so including questioning the status quo, taking risks, supporting others, stepping into the unknown, and managing uncertainty.

Learning Objectives:

• Identifying courage in an organizational context
• Translating the concept of courage to organizational action
• Recognizing multiple ways one can be courageous in organizational settings

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 8:45am and Thursday at 1:30pm

Creating a good business case is necessary to help leaders make good decisions on allocating resources.  A good business plan is also a blueprint for success.  This module will explain the key elements of a business case and discuss how to evaluate and measure business impact.  Four key elements such as the market and business opportunity, link to competitive advantage, communicating a business / economic / operating model and ability to implement will be discussed.  A shark-tank like exercise will be used as a case exercise to give practice on developing executive summaries of ideas to be funded. We will also explore the concept of risk to understand and communicate the uncertainties of a business case using a real world case example.  This will be a practical session focused on the qualitative elements that can be used to better inform and evaluate the business cases you submit and review.

In the #MeToo era, companies face increased pressure to ensure that opportunities and rewards are distributed equitably across the gender divide.  In this course, we will discuss cutting edge empirical work exploring how gender bias manifests in the modern workplace, as well as what strategies and programs have proven most effective in countering it.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 1:30pm

Economies and markets globally are impacted by the policy actions of Central Banks, especially the U.S. Federal Reserve System (FED). Perhaps this has never been more true than in the recent years of major volatility. The U.S. and global economies were growing steadily, and financial markets were at or near record highs in February 2020, then along came the global COVID pandemic. Unemployment skyrocketed in the US and some other major economies. Certain industries, such as airlines and restaurants, would have collapsed without government subsidies.

Many Central Banks set maximum targets for inflation. For the US and many other nations their Central Banks set this maximum target at 2%. There is no theoretical reason why 2% was chosen; indeed, some leading economists are calling for a higher target such as 3%.  Since COVID appeared, worldwide inflation jumped well above 2%, as it was boosted by expansionary monetary policies that aimed to help economies recover from the pandemic’s steep blow. Worldwide inflation was exacerbated by the supply chain problems stemming from the COVID restrictions by China and other major exporters, and the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Central Banks such as the FED have a predominant influence on interest rates, which have major impacts on economies and financial markets. Even before the worldwide economic recession (essentially, the decline was so steep that it could be termed a short depression) in Spring 2020, caused by pandemic lockdowns, many Central Banks had somewhat expansionary monetary policies. Pre-COVID some nations had slow economic growth and low inflation rates. Thus, their Central Banks engineered low, and in some cases in Europe and Japan negative, interest rates.

Monetary policy in most nations became much more expansionary or “loose” to help economies recover after the pandemic led to record unemployment in April 2020.  The FED slashed interest rates to near zero. The FED along with Central Banks in Europe, Canada, and Japan launched massive Quantitative Easing (QE).  QE is a strong and steady ballooning of the FED’s balance sheet, as it buys Treasury Securities and mortgage-backed securities from banks. To pay for these securities (asset) purchases, the FED increased banks’ deposits at the FED (the FED’s liabilities). Banks’s deposits at the FED are called their reserves, and with more reserves banks could expand the supply of credit. Essentially, by purchasing bonds and creating bank reserves the FED expanded the money supply, a process called the money multiplier. The goal was to spur economic recovery. This was successful.

The problem was that the massive expansion of credit and near-zero interest rates led to investors rushing into stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrencies (this portfolio shift was colloquially termed “there is no alternative” or TINA). Seeing other people gain wealth, others jumped in (termed “fear of missing out” or FOMO) and the US had asset price inflation.

Consumer price inflation was also rising, then the Russian invasion exacerbated it greatly by increasing global prices of energy and food. The FED has a dual mandate to maximize employment subject to keeping inflation low and steady. The FED monitors key variables related both to the job market and to inflation.  We will analyze different gauges on the Federal Reserve’s “job market dashboard” and its “inflation dashboard.” Pre-pandemic the U.S. exceeded ‘full employment’ as commonly defined and measured by the unemployment rate. Of course, the pandemic led to massive underemployment globally. We will analyze various forms of underemployment. Next, we portray the improving job market from the trough in April 2020 until now.

Our analysis of the “job market dashboard” and the “inflation dashboard” will highlight metrics which are crucial for the FED’s decisions about interest rates. These decisions have a strong influence on financial markets. We will discuss the recent path and forecasts for inflation and unemployment, given the FED’s targets.

The FED has succeeded in maximizing employment. However, inflation skyrocketed far above its 2% target. Thus, in Spring 2022 the FED started a continuing series of interest rate increases. The FED did this more aggressively than other Central Banks. This meant that interest rates in the US exceeded those in other advanced economies. Money flowed into the US to gain these higher yields. To receive the yields on assets denominated in US dollars, foreign individuals and institutions had to buy dollars, appreciating their foreign exchange value. A positive aspect of this is that it made imports cheaper, which pressured inflation downwards. A negative is that a more expensive dollar could increase the already massive US trade deficit.

This session will engage participants in analyzing the current state and prospects for monetary policy. This will enable participants to explore the future of economies and financial markets.

Learning Objectives:

• Financial professionals need to understand the dynamics of the economy and financial markets. It is crucial to understand the impact of monetary policy on financial markets and economies, especially on the job market and inflation. This session aims to heighten such knowledge.
• The performance of the US job market, including monthly job changes and the unemployment rate, has been the subject of intense study since the global financial crash of 2008-09.  The concern regarding underemployment spiked due to the 22 million jobs lost when the US locked down in March and April 2020. Job gains have been extremely strong since then, driving unemployment to historic lows and leading to record job openings. These job openings led to rising wage increases, which helped underpin high inflation. The Federal Reserve and European Central Banks rapidly increased interest rates to bring inflation down. This has led to the fear of a recession. The objective here is to link such analysis and concerns to monetary policy.
• Markets and economies globally are impacted by the policies of Central Banks such as the FED. The FED has an “inflation dashboard” of metrics useful for determining monetary policy, especially setting interest rates. An objective is to analyze inflation and monetary policy linkages and their implications for asset markets. We will engage on topics of crucial current and future interest to investors, to consumers, to firms and their employees, and to policymakers.

This session focuses on three cases in which the presenter led collaborative efforts to build the visions needed to energize and guide needed change in three very different and highly complex organizations.  General Rapp was the commander (CEO/President) of each organization – all of whom knew he would only be with them for a finite period of time and thus they could hold their breath and outwait him.  The first was a 5200-strong Corps of Engineers division that controlled all waterways, flood control, hydropower, environmental restoration, and regulation from St. Louis north and west to the Puget Sound (14 US states.)  The second was the 17500-strong organization he led in Afghanistan where the U.S. needed to rapidly change the mindset from surge to drawdown and put all logistics and transportation infrastructure in place to meet the President’s guidance.  The third was the 1100-strong US Army War College where he needed to change the culture of an academic institution.  Most corporate and public entity visions he has seen are palliatives that say little and drive less.  General Rapp found that, if well-constructed, attuned to the work force, and informing a strategic plan, a vision can be extremely powerful in creating organizational change.  Discussing those cases and the resulting lessons are the focus of the session.

Learning Objectives:

• Review three visioning case studies for common themes in creating organizational change.
• Discuss methods for changing organizational visions and culture.

Pre-Class Assignment – Survey

(Previously titled Communication Style)

Do you prefer to communicate directly, emphasize facts over feelings?  Are you more animated in your delivery?  Do you take your listener’s feelings into account?  Do you like to think first and then speak?  Whatever your preference, what impact does your communication style have on others in the workplace whether one-on-one or in group meetings?  How can you make the most of assets and downplay the liabilities of your communication style?  Complete the HRDQ What’s My Communication Style questionnaire as pre-work, and this session will help you identify your dominant communication style and give you the opportunity to see your style in action so that you can make the most of assets and downplay liabilities.  By the end of the session, you will have a greater appreciation of the impact of communication style on interpersonal relationships and results.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand key dimensions of communication style.
• Identify individual preferences.
• Practice making the most of assets and downplaying liabilities.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

In the Age of Uncertainty, everything is unusual. This interactive session deals with the demographic, economic, geopolitical, and monetary trends that are transforming consumer and financial markets. Using data and examples from both emerging and developed markets, the session prepares business leaders for the threats and opportunities embedded in massive change. Topics include the rise of the consumer above the age of 60, the growing middle class in emerging markets, the challenges to American global leadership, the future of the dollar, private cryptocurrencies, and the prospects for a digital dollar, pound, euro, and renminbi.

Pre-Class Assignment – Assessment

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm and Thursday at 1:30pm

This workshop will help strengthen your influence and persuasion skills.  Everybody needs these skills to build momentum for important initiatives, achieve organizational alignment, and implement strategies. Through a series of interactive discussions and role-plays, you will answer four key questions in this workshop: What are the steps that led to buy-in?  What is your communication style and how do you use to engage stakeholders?  How do you make your ideas simple and compelling? How do you generate lasting commitment? The workshop content is drawn from the book The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin), co-authored by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa. This class will require pre-work to be completed prior to the participants’ arrival.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the different channels of influence and how to use them effectively.
• Optimize each message so that it resonates stakeholders’ style and interests.
• Assess your progress on real problems you bring to the workshop and position yourself to see immediate results.
• Map the political landscape of your organization to see where the landmines are buried and where your allies can help you.
• Experience enhanced self-awareness, including emotional intelligence.
• Enhance the ability to assemble winning coalitions.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 1:30pm

A key component of building individuals, teams, and firms that behave ethically is the sometimes elusive concept of culture. Professor Conti-Brown introduces the idea of “cultural engineering,” or the practice of individuals and small groups exerting influence on the way that complex information is understood within larger organizations. Using examples from the financial services industry and from his (and participants’) personal lives, Conti-Brown teaches students that culture is about shaping the business context in a way that elevates individual and organizational behavior in coordination and especially in conflict; it is not and cannot be the banal repetition of vision statements. Instead, culture is about the difficult and essential interaction between personal values and institutional identity, a dynamic that this session explores in detail.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

The skills to manage mental illness are different than the skills needed to cultivate well-being. This session focuses on 5 research-based skills that anyone can use to cultivate well-being and take a proactive approach to preventing mental stress and illness. While Employee Assistance Programs focus on issues that people have at the workplace, there are little resources available for those of us who do not have issues however wish to harness their well-being and resultantly their performance. The 5 skills discussed in this session are ones that can be immediately practiced, applied, and taught to others. These skills capitalize on our mental, emotional, and behavioral attributes so participants learn to harness their own resources to feel better, function more effectively, and increase their well-being.

Participants will learn:

• To view their resourcefulness in a new way.
• Obtain a primer on the science of well-being.
• 5 skills to help harness their well-being.
• Learn how to generate optimism, capitalize on their strengths, and manage their emotions.

Also offered on Tuesday at 1:30pm

Participants will be on their feet for part of this session

Participants will learn how to build an adaptive, innovative team culture through learning a cutting-edge technique called the “After Action Review.” The After Action Review (AAR) is used by many organizations, including the United Nations, Microsoft, Harley Davidson, Navy Seals, to enhance commitment, focus on continuous improvement and sharing best practices across teams and organizations. Leaders can leverage the AAR to implement and reinforce change efforts, improve process execution, shape culture and influence employees to learn from past performance. Participants will learn how to conduct an effective After Action Review and will participate in the “Crossing the River” exercise—an engaging, fun and practical application of adaptive leadership in a challenging environment.

Learning Objectives

• Bring new insights and approaches to your team strategy development, innovation and execution
• Utilize the After Action Review Process to create the optimal balance of learning and performance on your teams
• Better understand your own and others’ leadership styles, and how to be a more adaptive leader
• Develop a collaborative, open, candid, innovative team learning environment
• Help your team respond more positively and creatively to external challenges

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

How is artificial intelligence changing the landscape of business? How can firms benefit from artificial intelligence? How do consumers interact with these new technologies? By the end of this session, participants will:

• Learn about the key AI technologies transforming businesses
• How consumers interact and engage with AI—the resistance to adopt new AI tools,
• issues of privacy and trust
• Addressing challenges and limitations of AI when deploying these technologies in
• consumer facing environments
• Discuss the new trends and the future of AI

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 10:35am

While technology is always changing, there are three key areas to focus on that will have a major impact on you, your company, your industry, and your country over the rest of your career.  Learn what they are, why they matter, their latest advances, and what decisions you can make now that will be the difference between success and failure going forward. Whole new ways to compute, communicate, and decision are coming, and with them will be great risks and great opportunity.  Get informed, involved, and advanced with the security aspects of Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, and 5G communications in this fast-paced class.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 10:35am

In a world of escalated uncertainty, how do we plan and execute a growth mindset? This session combines established fundamentals and forward-looking frameworks to help managers deliver innovative growth under conditions of high-uncertainty. Participants will be engaged in discussions and presented with examples & tools to aid with the translation from classroom to operations. Key takeaways: Participants will be able to discern between revenue & value; risk & uncertainty; and necessary versus alpha-seeking innovation plays.

Deep Dive from MicroInequities Year 1 session

MicroInequities: Maximizing the Impact – PART 2 takes participants from awareness to active application of the program’s concepts and skills. Participants answer the question, “Now what do I do?” Focus is on actionable solutions to actively manage unconscious bias in the workplace—actions that result in measurable behavior change.

Some examples include instructing managers to incorporate micromessaging in the ways they do coaching, provide feedback, and write performance appraisals. PART 2 also covers the ways in which the concepts are applied in team meetings and goal setting. Managing Proximity Bias in the Hybrid workplace is also examined.

In addition, a new concept: Value Protocols, is introduced. Just as companies function under a process of Operating Principals that lay out their corporate values, so too must leaders and colleagues learn to create and communicate their own set of workplace values and personal operating principles within a structure of personal value protocols.

Participants learn in-depth application of the Action Tools and how to apply them in daily workplace interactions.

The session incorporates analysis of case study scenarios. For meaningful practical progress, participants are also asked to bring workplace experiences and examples of how MicroInequities are typically experienced within the company’s specific business culture. They are guided through hands-on practice to manage it. Participants master the essential three pillars of micro-messages: Awareness, Skill and Application.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CLE®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 10:35am

This session will simulate a real securities arbitration. Participants will watch a condensed proceeding based on common investor disputes, with experienced trial attorneys playing the roles of Claimant’s and Respondents’ counsel. A discussion of case, and of best practices to prevent litigation and client disputes, will follow. Participants will receive a one-page background fact document prior to attending this session.

Learning Objectives:

• Evaluate the pros and cons of this method of dispute resolution and understand how arbitration differs from court litigation.
• See, up close and personal, the arbitration process from opening statements to conclusion.
• Learn what issues create problems for investors, financial firms, investment professionals and supervisory/compliance/risk and support personnel.
• Learn how to avoid problems that lead to arbitration and keep records to assist in defending claims.

Also offered Monday at 10:35am

The two challenges senior leaders cite, across industries, that are amplified in the time of a global pandemic are a high level of uncertainty and the need to balance short term and long-term needs and objectives.  Leaders in financial services face similar concerns, particularly as the global pandemic has accelerated the need for a clear digital strategy. This session interactively discusses these challenges in the context of making strategic decisions effectively.  Specifically, participants are provided five best practices that are important in “normal” conditions but are absolutely critical in a VUCA environment.  Current anecdotes supplement empirical research.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the most important best practices in a very dynamic environment
• Understand the importance of establishing making a decision by developing concrete strategic decision rights
• Identify key future trends and uncertainties for the organization in order to build agility in achieving positive results

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm and Thursday at 1:30pm

(Previously titled Strategies for Life Success)

When individuals understand how to get the best out of themselves, they can draw out the best in their team members and peers. Regrettably, most people fail to invest time to be self-reflective and create meaningful goals and then hold themselves accountable for progress towards those goals. In this session we will review the fundamental elements of creating a more happy, balanced, and successful life.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify your most deeply held personal core values
• Develop your unique definition of success
• Know your purpose and how it aligns with your business
• Understand and apply skills that reduce your stress and anxiety
• Create a road map for how you will improve both personally and professionally

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

Everybody tells you that you need to network to get ahead in life and business. They also tell you that you need to be more innovative and creative. But you typically get no advice or, worst, bad advice on how to do both of these things effectively. This session will help you realize how you can be wise about building and maintaining professional social networks to help you discover and develop novel ideas. It is meant to offer a foundation for getting the most out of the relationships you develop throughout your career.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 10:35am

In 2024, finance professionals face a time of uncertainty on economic, financial, and geopolitical fronts. This uncertainty follows the past 27 years of frequent bouts of volatility in both economies and asset markets worldwide. We witnessed the hype of the dot.com bubble and its subsequent bursting, leading to a global recession. Central banks, including the Federal Reserve, lowered interest rates and the global economy and asset markets rebounded strongly. However, along came the debt-fueled global real estate bubble. The bursting of that speculative bubble caused a worldwide stock market crash, global financial crisis, and “Great Recession.” Investors who did not panic gained from a strong recovery in global asset markets starting in March 2009. Many real and financial assets both in the US and abroad reached record-high prices in February 2020. The high valuations led many to fear significant market risks, for example from a possible global economic slowdown or a trade war with China stemming from President’s Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

The risk that was not anticipated was public health. The pandemic led to a sudden drop in the stock market, which declined by 34% from its February 2020 peak to its trough in March 2020. The economy moved from its record-long (nearly 11 consecutive years) economic growth phase to a short but severe economic depression; a net of over 22 million US jobs were lost in March and especially in April 2020.   Massive government intervention, with unprecedented expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, restored economic growth. The massive monetary and liquidity expansion by the FED, and its creation of near-zero interest rates, fueled a rapid V-shaped rebound of the stock market. Stock market and real estate prices continued to climb to successive new highs. Economic growth surged.

Economic growth continued, but it decelerated in autumn and winter 2020-21 as a second surge of COVID infection acted as a brake. Fortunately, vaccines became available and as their distribution spread many jobs were created in service industries. Economic and job growth continued, although the delta and then Omicron variants, did slow economic growth in winter 2021-22. Still, steady growth in jobs brought the unemployment rate quite low. The surprising strength of the economy caused a level of job openings that was unprecedented and unanticipated. The tightness in the job market led to larger wage increases and combining that with global supply-chain problems led to a rise in US inflation.  Russia’s unwarranted invasion of Ukraine reduced global supplies of energy and food, accelerating inflation worldwide. This put pressure on many Central Banks to rein in their monetary and fiscal policies, leading major economies to the precipice of recession. Economic growth has stalled in Europe and the US. We heard a term from the late 1970s, stagflation. The hope is for a soft landing – most analysts did not predict it – and the FED seemed to have succeeded. We will examine the current situation, while also analyzing longer-term past trends in the economy and financial markets, all with an eye to understanding possible future trends and scenarios.

Underlying longer-term economic and financial forecasts are major demographic trends. In general, birth rates have declined significantly worldwide, plunging steeply in some nations in Europe and East Asia. Even birth rates in the US are down since the Great Recession began in 2008, with fertility rates now below the level needed to “replace” the US population absent immigration.  In the recent past, demographic trends highlighted low birth rates and consequent aging in advanced economies, contrasting with high birth rates and youthful populations in emerging markets. Global labor force growth would have to come from emerging or poorer economies.  Now, even many emerging markets have declining birth rates.  Analyzing demographic trends is crucial for investing strategy.

This session will separate fact from fiction while analyzing the implications of global forecasts and linkages for investors. The uncertainty regarding the pandemic, the U.S. and global economies, inflation, Russia/Ukraine and commodity prices, interest rates, exchange rates, job markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and the sustainability of massively increasing government debt worldwide all point toward the need for a truly global diversification strategy. This session will feature a strategic look at the economic, financial, and demographic trends that are likely to evolve in the major economies of the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Help financial professionals analyze the US and global economic outlook and longer-term economic trends in this time of great uncertainty in multiple dimensions.
• Increase participants’ understanding of global and US financial linkages to the volatile economic and policy environment we have experienced in recent decades and especially recent years.
• Portray and contrast global and U.S. demographic trends, analyzing their investment implications. We will explore forecasts of the demographic trends of the major economies such as China, the US, the EU, and India.
• The ultimate objective of this SII session is to help participants form global investing strategies based on the three preceding objectives.

Pre-Class Assignment – Videos with Multiple Choice Questions

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 10:35am

In this course Professor Tiffany will review the origins of the current global economy and how recent events have called into question the sustainability of free and open markets that were a key outcome of the historically prosperous post-WWII international political economy. The presentation will be preceded by a required short video that participants view prior to arriving in Philadelphia.  The video will provide background content so that the live session can focus exclusively on current issues and allow sufficient time for participant discussion.  To facilitate this, all attendees will be required to respond to multiple-choice questions about the video content; the responses will be presented in March.

The US elections of 2016 and 2020 created a potentially profound shift in recent American economic policy, both domestic and global– and the mid-term elections of 2022 do not appear to have not altered this trajectory. In the international arena the prior President staked out positions radically different from those of the post-World War II “Bretton Woods System” engineered by the US.  This latter political-economic regime guided much of the world as “globalization” took hold and many Emerging Nations—especially China—prospered in what was termed the “Neoliberal Order.” Yet one critical result of Trump’s nationalistic “America First” agenda has been deep uncertainty about the future prospects of international trade policies, which played a significant role in the overall growth of global prosperity for the past 70 years- including in the financial services sector. And at least so far, the Biden Administration has done little to alter this path—especially with regard to US-China economic and political relations. Indeed, it is this latter issue which is driving so much of the long-term considerations about America’s economic future. The video will provide details concerning these events and, hopefully, stimulate your thoughts prior to the “live” sessions at Wharton.

March class: The class will provide a forum in which all participants will be encouraged to offer their own perspective on key issues regarding “Globalization” and its prospects going forward.  The session will begin with (a) Professor Tiffany’s explication of five key take-aways from his video commentary, (b) a review of aggregated participant responses from the mandatory multiple-choice questions, (c) brief sharing by participants of ideas and insights, and (d) an open-mic discussion about what actions might be taken next on these important issues.

Learning Objectives:

• To inform participants of the broader economic and political global trends of the recent past and how these may affect the direction of the American economy in the 21st Century going forward.
• To attempt to put the current political situation of a Biden Presidency into a framework that can provide insight into potential economic shifts in the world economy and the financial services industry.
• To stimulate participant thinking about how the changing global political-economic environment will affect economic progress in the United States in the coming decades ahead as a resurgent China makes claims for global leadership.
• To provoke a thoughtful discussion regarding the aims and goals of rival nations, such as China, and how they might affect the ability of the US to achieve its own economic and political objectives in the coming years.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 10:35am

The key to a company’s financial success is strategy execution.  Companies that have success in long term value creation have a passion for execution.  This session will use financial tools to analyze the differences between value creating and value destroying companies and show that the pattern is the same in every industry and in every part of the world. At the strategy formulation stage, it is important to select a strategy that the company understand its capabilities to execute more effectively and increase the likelihood of success. It is important to realize that profitability is necessary, but it is very fragile and it can disappear rapidly as market systems evolve. It is important to be vigilant about the changes taking place in your industry.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the financial tools that are useful in identifying value creating companies and the metrics used by investors
• Learn about companies that have tied operating metrics to financial performance to drive growth, innovation and value creation
• Learn how you can impact these key value drivers to create value for your enterprise

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 1:30pm

This session will explain why the Federal Reserve’s response to the Covid Pandemic has caused so much inflation and why they must look at money and market prices to determine monetary policy.  We will also examine the valuation of the market and the forecast for interest rates.

Learning Objectives:

• Effect of monetary Expansion on Inflation
• Behavior of Real Interest Rates
• Understanding historical returns on asset classes
• Determine Valuations and P-E ratios and future returns

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 10:35am

**We want to highlight for you that there is content overlap between this session and Andy’s other sessions. They feature different examples and research, but, by design, share several of the same tools. We suggest choosing only one of Andy’s sessions unless you are okay with the overlapping content.

What is the most important thing for living a happier life — even in financial services?

One of SII’s most popular sessions, this enlightening exploration of happiness can improve your life both personally and professionally. You’ll learn:

• What matters most for happiness according to the world’s longest study, and why it isn’t simply money, achievements, or even love
• What matters most for team performance, again according to data
• Why stressors don’t exist, and the key to turning friction in your life into greater “flow”
• Specific, practical exercises to increase accountability and lead change more effectively, both at work and at home

All attendees will receive a free membership to a special online site so you can continue applying what you learned after the session ends.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

The future of digital business and consumer interaction is being built on blockchain – obtain the knowledge to engage with it meaningfully. In this course, we dive deep into the world of digital assets, blockchain technology, and the emerging Web3 ecosystem. The course starts with an introduction of blockchain technology, digital assets, and Web3. Then learn how this technology is transforming traditional finance with increased transparency, accessibility, and efficiency. Examine how blockchain adoption is accelerating across banking, consumer loyalty programs, and gaming. We’ll also unpack real-world implementation challenges and customer experiences. The course concludes with an examination of the convergence of Web3 technologies and AI systems. Join us on this comprehensive exploration of the transformative potential of decentralized networks.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the main components of blockchain technology
• Discover which use cases are gaining momentum for mainstream adoption
• Learn from real-world implementations

Pre-Class Assignment – Exercise

The reality is that nobody likes conflict very much.  Of course, there are those who thrive on conflict, but most managers would prefer to avoid it.  And too often they do just that—to the detriment of those involved.

This session will teach participants how to manage conflict.  They will learn a specific conflict resolution model and the skills that make it work.  And they will practice each step to ensure that they understand how to apply the skills.  They will also learn how to apply these skills in virtual or remote conversations.

Participants will learn how to acknowledge concerns and issues with empathy and understanding.  They will explore how to get the others speaking to understand what the real issues are.  And they will be introduced to the art of reframing in order to problem solve effectively and resolve the issues.

Avoiding conflict is not what leaders do.  They resolve it as quickly as possible and this session will introduce participants to the skills, models and techniques to do this effectively.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn a specific conflict resolution model.
• Understand that our tendency is to be aggressive or defensive when conflict arises and how to avoid falling into these traps.
• Investigate the skills required to resolve conflict like acknowledging, reframing, addressing and seeking elaboration.
• Realize that conflict resolution requires give and take on both sides and that winning is not the overall objective.
• Explore now to apply these skills remotely.

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Exercise

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm

This session presents a novel approach to thinking about contemporary leadership challenges.  The early years of the American Revolution present a spectacularly rich tapestry of leadership challenges and issues that inform today’s leaders.  By anchoring the leadership lessons in historical vignettes, re-examining several myths, and connecting leader challenges to today, the session helps make learning leadership “sticky,” memorable, and useful to modern leaders and managers.  As Mark Twain is attributed to have written, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”   Participants in this session will be expected to do select readings and “play” key Revolutionary War leaders in class discussion about the contemporary leadership lessons gleaned from important decisions and events.  The presenter is a retired Army major general who was president of the US Army War College, a recent resident lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, and now a leadership consultant with numerous S&P 500 companies.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze historical case studies for contemporary leadership lessons.
• Make connections to challenges in today’s business environment.

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm

The very idea of holding someone to account tends to make people bristle with apprehension and fear regardless of whether they are the one holding or the one being held to account. If your goal is to help a direct report meet deadlines or to collaborate more effectively with a team member, it’s vital to create high levels of both personal and mutual accountability.

Learning Objectives:

• Discover how to build more trust
• Understand the importance of setting clear expectations
• Examine why there is a lack of accountability
• Learn how to create more psychological safety
• Review how to give effective feedback
• Grasp why praise and celebration are essential to accountability

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm

Research from Google’s best-performing teams suggests that among many factors that contribute to the health of a team, the most important lever is the presence of “psychological safety”. Drawing upon current research– from Google, MIT and other organizations — we will explore what psychological safety means, why it’s so important, and what you, as leaders can do to create the conditions for it on your teams.

Though we may believe we are creating the conditions for collaboration to occur, we may inadvertently undermine psychological safety – often fueled by our own emotional immaturity. So, in addition to exploring what you can do to create psychological safety, we will also discuss the barriers within you that may get in the way. What is most required is that we practice “growing up at work”.

What’s at stake is a more collaborative team environment, as well as greater engagement and aliveness for all.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand critical elements that contribute to a collaborative team environment—with a specific focus upon psychological safety
• Draw upon neuroscience to understand the factors that can contribute to, and threaten, team members’ ability to contribute fully
• Identify where you, as a leader, are doing things well, and how you could do even more to create psychological safety for team members
• Explore the barriers inside of you that keep you from promoting psychological safety and better understand what it means for you – and others – to “grow up at work”

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 8:45am

**We want to highlight for you that there is content overlap between this session and Andy’s other sessions. They feature different examples and research, but, by design, share several of the same tools. We suggest choosing only one of Andy’s sessions unless you are okay with the overlapping content.

What is the most important thing for living a happier life — even in financial services?

One of SII’s most popular sessions, this enlightening exploration of happiness can improve your life both personally and professionally. You’ll learn:

• What matters most for happiness according to the world’s longest study, and why it isn’t simply money, achievements, or even love
• What matters most for team performance, again according to data
• Why stressors don’t exist, and the key to turning friction in your life into greater “flow”
• Specific, practical exercises to increase accountability and lead change more effectively, both at work and at home

All attendees will receive a free membership to a special online site so you can continue applying what you learned after the session ends.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Workplace interactions can create extraordinary engagement and vigor that allow people and organizations to thrive, or they can have the opposite effect. This workshop explores the difference between the two. Our interactions at work, however brief or extended they might be, have qualities that if better understood can allow us to harness the positive impacts of them. Gaining insights into these qualities is essential for us to perform at our best. We are social beings that require a connection; many argue that most of the work in organizations is conducted through informal methods and networks based on our connections. While communication is one way we connect, if done correctly it can bind us, or if done incorrectly it can alienate us. The workshop will help participants understand distinctions between communicating and connecting for results. Drawing from psychological and management research on positive emotions, relationships, and connections at work; participants will learn how to create and then harness high-quality connections for the benefit of all.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the meaning and importance of connecting with others.
• To become aware of the research based criteria that help create high-quality connections.
• Learn techniques that help conversations become more engaging and lead to the building of connections.
• Recognize how we create value for each other at work and use this awareness to build connections.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm

Ideal for: Participants who would like to get familiar with the private equity industry, learn the anatomy of a deal, industry trends, and understand the sources of value creation and the drivers of return of private equity funds.

Private equity is an asset class that has the potential to generate sustainable long-term returns for its investors. Although it is a relatively new asset class with some unique characteristics that may not be familiar to investors, it has become a key component of many investors’ portfolios. In this entry-level elective session, we will cover the structure of a private equity fund and describe how a private equity fund operates and governs its portfolio companies. We will talk about the changing trends in the private equity industry. We will also discuss whether and how a private equity fund creates value in a changing macroeconomic landscape.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm

The worst thing an investor can do is allow their emotions to become their portfolio’s worst enemy. Since fear is frequently a greater motivator than greed, how can an investor extract their emotions from the equation and continue to be appropriately allocated? Investing is a journey. By being forewarned of potential hazards ahead, through an understanding of stock market seasonality, cycles, and recovery characteristics, even the more cautious investor can leverage history to help calm their nerves and stay the course.

Learning Objectives:

• Cycles And Seasonality: See how the S&P 500 typically performs during all 16 quarters of the presidential cycle, as well as examine typical returns on a semi-annual and monthly basis.
• Market Indicators: The market’s action early in the year frequently hints at the full-year performance. Learn about five market indicators that have functioned as divining rods for future price action.
• Investment Strategies: There is an old saying that “prices lead fundamentals.” You will be introduced to sector rotation strategies that leverage price momentum, correlation, and seasonality.

Check your mobile app for location.

Today’s wealth management world is rapidly changing.  A new generation of investors is entering the ecosystem, bringing with them a set of expectations for faster, more efficient, and more transparent engagements with the advisors and enterprises that serve them.  Technology innovation is taking place at a rate far greater than ever before, with new capabilities like AI accelerating the pace of how wealth firms connect with their clients and improve the end experience of both advisors and investors.

Leading organizations through these cycles of disruption and innovation requires experience, authenticity, and courage.  With over 40 years’ experience leading teams and businesses at some of the world’s biggest wealth management firms, Dr. Stephen C. Daffron (Chairman and CEO of BetaNXT) has seen it all – economic fluctuations, revolutionary tech innovation, remarkable advancements in data science and processing, just to name a few.

Join Dr. Daffron for a lunch hour interactive conversation on the lessons he has learned as a leader across the years, his thoughts on the future trends of wealth management, and his reflections on what makes for a successful organization during times of significant change.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm

A key component of building individuals, teams, and firms that behave ethically is the sometimes elusive concept of culture. Professor Conti-Brown introduces the idea of “cultural engineering,” or the practice of individuals and small groups exerting influence on the way that complex information is understood within larger organizations. Using examples from the financial services industry and from his (and participants’) personal lives, Conti-Brown teaches students that culture is about shaping the business context in a way that elevates individual and organizational behavior in coordination and especially in conflict; it is not and cannot be the banal repetition of vision statements. Instead, culture is about the difficult and essential interaction between personal values and institutional identity, a dynamic that this session explores in detail.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Discover how AI reshapes the landscape of banking and financial markets, with a focus on practical application and strategic implementation. This session unravels the complexities of AI, from its foundational principles to its real-world implications. Engage in vibrant case studies and discussions, dissecting AI’s ethical, regulatory, and risk factors. Equip yourself with the knowledge to harness AI effectively within your organization, navigating its evolving challenges and opportunities.

Learning Objectives:

• Introduction to AI — trends, tools, and the AI lifecycle
• AI in Financial Services – use cases and applications
• Risks & Responsible AI – ethics, governance, and hallucinations
• Overcoming Challenges in AI Adoption
• Strategic Leadership in an AI-Era

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Corporate leaders must increasingly navigate contentious social and political issues.  This session aims to equip participants with tools to understand when and how to take a public stance on a contested issue.  Through an interactive lecture, we will use recent real-world case studies to derive key takeaways supported by cutting-edge empirical research and field experiments.  Participants will leave the lecture with a clearer understanding of the factors to consider in anticipating likely effects of a stance on the loyalties of various stakeholders, ranging from shareholders to consumers and regulators.  We will also define the features of a well-constructed stance, including considerations around how it is timed, who it is taken with, who speaks for the company, and what makes it compelling.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

How do you build trust, make decisions, and disagree with a colleague or boss from a different culture? Do you come from a country that avoids confrontation in team settings, or one in which open debate is a positive attribute of collective work? Do you believe the best leader is one who facilitates among equals, or one who follows set hierarchical lines? What explains why junior pilots from one country stay silent when the captain veers off course but might speak up if from another? In this session, we will map the world’s cultures along eight dimensions to show how ingrained ideas about hierarchy and trust determine behavior in work settings. Participants will also take a personality test to identify their own cultural orientation and how to translate this awareness into building productive relationships across diverse, multicultural, and global teams in the virtual and in-person settings.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Driving Inclusion and Diversity has been a critical priority for organizations for many years, and open dialogue about what has worked and what has not, has accelerated since the increased focus on social and economic justice following the death of George Floyd. Our Industry has undertaken many initiatives in this space, beyond public rhetoric and conversations on the topic. There continues to be opportunities for the Financial Services Industry to drive collective improvement of the financial health of diverse and underserved communities, as well as their representation in the Industry. However, there are new headwinds that will challenge company responses related to the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling and the political dialogue around DE&I and what some call “wokeism” that will be heightened during the 2024 presidential election.

Research provides us with many insights into how we can generate results, as well as the scope of the opportunity, which suggests great improvement in the sustainable long term business models for our Firms. Participants leave the session with a better appreciation for why I&D matters from multiple perspectives, actions which can help narrow the wealth gap in diverse communities and business opportunities created, as well as approaches to create a more diverse workforce in the Financial Services Industry.

Learning Objectives:

• Why inclusion and diversity are an organizational culture and ethical issue.
• Reframing I&D as a business case for wealth creation and economic growth.
• Earning trust in diverse communities.
• Industry collective impact. Sharing best practices.
• Strategies to recruit and retain a diverse workforce.

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”, wrote Shakespeare.  Leaders often step onto stage – to present an idea, influence a decision, ask for more resources, or inspire others to action – and these experiences require practice, poise, presence, and purpose.  This session aims to understand what separates a good from a great speaking engagement and offers tangible skills to strengthen your public presence.  These skills are not only useful for large presentations with dozens or hundreds in the audience but also for smaller gatherings, client meetings, team huddles, and other crucial business interactions where public speaking can be a difference maker.  Not only will this session focus on outward-facing skills but will also help connect a leader’s public presence with their own authentic self.  While some might argue that strong public speakers possess this skill innately, this workshop will prove otherwise as we demystify the building blocks of public speaking and train ourselves to strengthen our own engagement with audiences.  By learning to be more “present,” participants will understand how to be more motivational as a leader, more convincing as a negotiator and more open and honest as a team member.  This workshop develops and utilizes a practical toolkit for leaders to continue working on their public speaking and their ability to communicate their vision and their story long after the workshop has ended.

Learning Objectives:

• To strengthen one’s own public speaking and ability to engage, motivate and inspire others.
• To develop and use an authentic presentation style.
• To recognize and overcome individual habits when connecting and engaging with audiences.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 8:45am

This session will explain why the Federal Reserve’s response to the Covid Pandemic has caused so much inflation and why they must look at money and market prices to determine monetary policy.  We will also examine the valuation of the market and the forecast for interest rates.

Learning Objectives:

• Effect of monetary Expansion on Inflation
• Behavior of Real Interest Rates
• Understanding historical returns on asset classes
• Determine Valuations and P-E ratios and future returns

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 1:30pm

Economies and markets globally are impacted by the policy actions of Central Banks, especially the U.S. Federal Reserve System (FED). Perhaps this has never been more true than in the recent years of major volatility. The U.S. and global economies were growing steadily, and financial markets were at or near record highs in February 2020, then along came the global COVID pandemic. Unemployment skyrocketed in the US and some other major economies. Certain industries, such as airlines and restaurants, would have collapsed without government subsidies.

Many Central Banks set maximum targets for inflation. For the US and many other nations their Central Banks set this maximum target at 2%. There is no theoretical reason why 2% was chosen; indeed, some leading economists are calling for a higher target such as 3%.  Since COVID appeared, worldwide inflation jumped well above 2%, as it was boosted by expansionary monetary policies that aimed to help economies recover from the pandemic’s steep blow. Worldwide inflation was exacerbated by the supply chain problems stemming from the COVID restrictions by China and other major exporters, and the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Central Banks such as the FED have a predominant influence on interest rates, which have major impacts on economies and financial markets. Even before the worldwide economic recession (essentially, the decline was so steep that it could be termed a short depression) in Spring 2020, caused by pandemic lockdowns, many Central Banks had somewhat expansionary monetary policies. Pre-COVID some nations had slow economic growth and low inflation rates. Thus, their Central Banks engineered low, and in some cases in Europe and Japan negative, interest rates.

Monetary policy in most nations became much more expansionary or “loose” to help economies recover after the pandemic led to record unemployment in April 2020.  The FED slashed interest rates to near zero. The FED along with Central Banks in Europe, Canada, and Japan launched massive Quantitative Easing (QE).  QE is a strong and steady ballooning of the FED’s balance sheet, as it buys Treasury Securities and mortgage-backed securities from banks. To pay for these securities (asset) purchases, the FED increased banks’ deposits at the FED (the FED’s liabilities). Banks’s deposits at the FED are called their reserves, and with more reserves banks could expand the supply of credit. Essentially, by purchasing bonds and creating bank reserves the FED expanded the money supply, a process called the money multiplier. The goal was to spur economic recovery. This was successful.

The problem was that the massive expansion of credit and near-zero interest rates led to investors rushing into stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrencies (this portfolio shift was colloquially termed “there is no alternative” or TINA). Seeing other people gain wealth, others jumped in (termed “fear of missing out” or FOMO) and the US had asset price inflation.

Consumer price inflation was also rising, then the Russian invasion exacerbated it greatly by increasing global prices of energy and food. The FED has a dual mandate to maximize employment subject to keeping inflation low and steady. The FED monitors key variables related both to the job market and to inflation.  We will analyze different gauges on the Federal Reserve’s “job market dashboard” and its “inflation dashboard.” Pre-pandemic the U.S. exceeded ‘full employment’ as commonly defined and measured by the unemployment rate. Of course, the pandemic led to massive underemployment globally. We will analyze various forms of underemployment. Next, we portray the improving job market from the trough in April 2020 until now.

Our analysis of the “job market dashboard” and the “inflation dashboard” will highlight metrics which are crucial for the FED’s decisions about interest rates. These decisions have a strong influence on financial markets. We will discuss the recent path and forecasts for inflation and unemployment, given the FED’s targets.

The FED has succeeded in maximizing employment. However, inflation skyrocketed far above its 2% target. Thus, in Spring 2022 the FED started a continuing series of interest rate increases. The FED did this more aggressively than other Central Banks. This meant that interest rates in the US exceeded those in other advanced economies. Money flowed into the US to gain these higher yields. To receive the yields on assets denominated in US dollars, foreign individuals and institutions had to buy dollars, appreciating their foreign exchange value. A positive aspect of this is that it made imports cheaper, which pressured inflation downwards. A negative is that a more expensive dollar could increase the already massive US trade deficit.

This session will engage participants in analyzing the current state and prospects for monetary policy. This will enable participants to explore the future of economies and financial markets.

Learning Objectives:

• Financial professionals need to understand the dynamics of the economy and financial markets. It is crucial to understand the impact of monetary policy on financial markets and economies, especially on the job market and inflation. This session aims to heighten such knowledge.
• The performance of the US job market, including monthly job changes and the unemployment rate, has been the subject of intense study since the global financial crash of 2008-09.  The concern regarding underemployment spiked due to the 22 million jobs lost when the US locked down in March and April 2020. Job gains have been extremely strong since then, driving unemployment to historic lows and leading to record job openings. These job openings led to rising wage increases, which helped underpin high inflation. The Federal Reserve and European Central Banks rapidly increased interest rates to bring inflation down. This has led to the fear of a recession. The objective here is to link such analysis and concerns to monetary policy.
• Markets and economies globally are impacted by the policies of Central Banks such as the FED. The FED has an “inflation dashboard” of metrics useful for determining monetary policy, especially setting interest rates. An objective is to analyze inflation and monetary policy linkages and their implications for asset markets. We will engage on topics of crucial current and future interest to investors, to consumers, to firms and their employees, and to policymakers.

Pre-Class Assignment – Assessment

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm

(Previously titled Playing to Your Strengths)

Your reputation precedes you.  How do others see you at work?  Are you perceived as cool, calm, and collected?  Emotionally expressive?  Competitive?  A team player?  Sociable?  Independent?  A people person?  Task-focused?  Conscientious?   Willing to take a risk? Imaginative? Practical? Do you seem to prefer formal education or hands-on learning?  How do these perceptions about you play out when you face an issue, problem, or adversity at work?  What consequences do they have for better or worse? Complete the Hogan Personality Inventory as pre-work, and this session will give you the opportunity to see yourself as others see you, reflect on your strengths, and consider how to make the most of strengths and downplay liabilities.

Learning Objectives:

• See yourself as others see you.
• Reflect on the assets of your personality and recognize the liabilities.
• Learn how to make the most of strengths so that weaknesses pale by comparison.

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm

Recent academic work on the science of innovation and creativity has revealed a new, evidence-based approach to coming up with new ideas and solving problems – but it is one that is not widely known outside of academia! In this session, we will first discuss these new approaches to innovating, including a number of simple tips and common mistakes. Then, in the second half of the session, you will play the Breakthrough Game, which allows you to apply the tools you learned to use in a fun and engaging way. Playing the Breakthrough Game, participants not only solve one particular challenge as a team but also, crucially, learn how to drive the innovation process in the future.

You will come out of this session with short-term takeaways that will make your future idea generation sessions more productive, an actionable idea that you can pursue, and a general framework that you can use to solve problems and search for new opportunities.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Exercise

In this session we will explore the art and practice of coaching for growth, including applicable skills for the workplace, using a dynamic and interactive examination of the topic. Leaders aspiring to make a difference and achieve impactful outcomes, guide others to maximize their potential by fostering engagement, excitement, and accountability. They do so by supporting actions toward goals in ways that encourage tapping into others’ abilities to enhance outcomes. A key process for doing so is coaching. This hands-on session begins with a brief overview of why and when leaders use coaching, along with introducing a practical coaching model. Through interactive exercises, participants actively develop and practice coaching skills, with the added benefit of receiving valuable feedback.  The session concludes with a comprehensive debrief, including how to maximize coaching opportunities when you are the coaches.

Learning objectives:

• Learn effective approaches to incorporating coaching within a professional setting.
• Develop essential coaching skills, including identifying coaching objectives and adaptive strategies.
• Enhance your ability to gain from coaching opportunities, both as a coach and a coaches.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

This session will help you determine if your organization is maximizing the potential benefits of its global footprint. While it’s common for firms to expand—often rapidly—into foreign markets, designing a global strategy to profit as much as possible from those markets is hard. Are you in foreign markets for the right reasons? Are you operating in the right locations? Are you maximizing profits in each market at the expense of total firm profits? Is your profit-making strategy the right one given your organizational and technical capabilities? You’ll walk away from this session with the tools to answer these questions, bringing to your team a simple but powerful framework to design a profitable global strategy.  This session can be taken in tandem with “Global Strategy 2 – Execution” or on its own. 

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Exercise

Also offered Wednesday at 10:35am

This session presents a novel approach to thinking about contemporary leadership challenges.  The early years of the American Revolution present a spectacularly rich tapestry of leadership challenges and issues that inform today’s leaders.  By anchoring the leadership lessons in historical vignettes, re-examining several myths, and connecting leader challenges to today, the session helps make learning leadership “sticky,” memorable, and useful to modern leaders and managers.  As Mark Twain is attributed to have written, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”   Participants in this session will be expected to do select readings and “play” key Revolutionary War leaders in class discussion about the contemporary leadership lessons gleaned from important decisions and events.  The presenter is a retired Army major general who was president of the US Army War College, a recent resident lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, and now a leadership consultant with numerous S&P 500 companies.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze historical case studies for contemporary leadership lessons.
• Make connections to challenges in today’s business environment.

Also offered Wednesday at 10:35am

Research from Google’s best-performing teams suggests that among many factors that contribute to the health of a team, the most important lever is the presence of “psychological safety”. Drawing upon current research– from Google, MIT and other organizations — we will explore what psychological safety means, why it’s so important, and what you, as leaders can do to create the conditions for it on your teams.

Though we may believe we are creating the conditions for collaboration to occur, we may inadvertently undermine psychological safety – often fueled by our own emotional immaturity. So, in addition to exploring what you can do to create psychological safety, we will also discuss the barriers within you that may get in the way. What is most required is that we practice “growing up at work”.

What’s at stake is a more collaborative team environment, as well as greater engagement and aliveness for all.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand critical elements that contribute to a collaborative team environment—with a specific focus upon psychological safety
• Draw upon neuroscience to understand the factors that can contribute to, and threaten, team members’ ability to contribute fully
• Identify where you, as a leader, are doing things well, and how you could do even more to create psychological safety for team members
• Explore the barriers inside of you that keep you from promoting psychological safety and better understand what it means for you – and others – to “grow up at work”

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

Did you ever wonder how the firm you work for makes money?  Have you listened to your Chief Financial Officer talk about the quarterly earnings, and walk away scratching your head?  This introductory session developed for those without a financial background takes a simplified look at where the money comes from and where it goes to determine the profit (loss) announced in that last quarterly report.  Focusing on financial services firms, we will look at the businesses of our industry and how they drive the core operating activities.  In layman’s terms we will break down the income streams and expenses taking the jargon out of financial reporting.  If you would like a simple explanation of “ratios” like EBITDA, EPS, ROI, RWC and buzz words like Tier 1 Capital, deferred tax assets and non-counterparty risk, then this is the session for you.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Better understand your firm’s financial statements and the jargon around your firm’s quarterly announcements
• Know the drivers behind the business of financial services
• Have a good feel for the types of risk in our industry and how they impact your firm.

This way, the next time your firm reports earnings, you will be able to understand the rhetoric, the balance sheet, and the income statement, making you a better-informed employee.

Pre-Class Assignment – Survey

Also offered Tuesday at 8:45am

This session focuses on a strengths-based approach to leadership at and outside of work. Using tools developed through decades of research, hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, and millions of surveys, this body of knowledge is unique and provides answers to questions like who do I need to be? and what does it mean to come from a position of strength? Focusing on what is wrong, areas of weakness, or things that need to be improved can only take us so far, combined with what’s working well, our strengths, we can harness a lot more potential. This session takes a deep dive into the language of strengths and how to apply them.

Participants will learn:

• What a strengths-based approach is.
• The difference between existing strength based approaches.
• How strengths play a part in our well-being by helping us feel better and function more effectively.
• Obtain a rank ordering of their strengths and how to interpret their results.

Pre-Class Assignment – Assessment

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 1:30pm

(Previously titled Playing to Your Strengths)

Your reputation precedes you.  How do others see you at work?  Are you perceived as cool, calm, and collected?  Emotionally expressive?  Competitive?  A team player?  Sociable?  Independent?  A people person?  Task-focused?  Conscientious?   Willing to take a risk? Imaginative? Practical? Do you seem to prefer formal education or hands-on learning?  How do these perceptions about you play out when you face an issue, problem, or adversity at work?  What consequences do they have for better or worse? Complete the Hogan Personality Inventory as pre-work, and this session will give you the opportunity to see yourself as others see you, reflect on your strengths, and consider how to make the most of strengths and downplay liabilities.

Learning Objectives:

• See yourself as others see you.
• Reflect on the assets of your personality and recognize the liabilities.
• Learn how to make the most of strengths so that weaknesses pale by comparison.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 10:35am

Ideal for: Participants who would like to get familiar with the private equity industry, learn the anatomy of a deal, industry trends, and understand the sources of value creation and the drivers of return of private equity funds.

Private equity is an asset class that has the potential to generate sustainable long-term returns for its investors. Although it is a relatively new asset class with some unique characteristics that may not be familiar to investors, it has become a key component of many investors’ portfolios. In this entry-level elective session, we will cover the structure of a private equity fund and describe how a private equity fund operates and governs its portfolio companies. We will talk about the changing trends in the private equity industry. We will also discuss whether and how a private equity fund creates value in a changing macroeconomic landscape.

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm and Thursday at 1:30pm

(Previously titled Strategies for Life Success)

When individuals understand how to get the best out of themselves, they can draw out the best in their team members and peers. Regrettably, most people fail to invest time to be self-reflective and create meaningful goals and then hold themselves accountable for progress towards those goals. In this session we will review the fundamental elements of creating a more happy, balanced, and successful life.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify your most deeply held personal core values
• Develop your unique definition of success
• Know your purpose and how it aligns with your business
• Understand and apply skills that reduce your stress and anxiety
• Create a road map for how you will improve both personally and professionally

In this course we will examine sustainability and ESG, two of the most significant current trends in financial services.  The class will explore what ESG and sustainability are and the opportunities and risks they pose for financial services firms.  The discussion will include commercial, regulatory and policy risks and opportunities. With billions of assets pouring into this space, financial service professionals need to understand both the meaning and implications for them and their firms.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 10:35am

The worst thing an investor can do is allow their emotions to become their portfolio’s worst enemy. Since fear is frequently a greater motivator than greed, how can an investor extract their emotions from the equation and continue to be appropriately allocated? Investing is a journey. By being forewarned of potential hazards ahead, through an understanding of stock market seasonality, cycles, and recovery characteristics, even the more cautious investor can leverage history to help calm their nerves and stay the course.

Learning Objectives:

• Cycles And Seasonality: See how the S&P 500 typically performs during all 16 quarters of the presidential cycle, as well as examine typical returns on a semi-annual and monthly basis.
• Market Indicators: The market’s action early in the year frequently hints at the full-year performance. Learn about five market indicators that have functioned as divining rods for future price action.
• Investment Strategies: There is an old saying that “prices lead fundamentals.” You will be introduced to sector rotation strategies that leverage price momentum, correlation, and seasonality.

**We want to highlight for you that there is content overlap between this session and Andy’s other sessions. They feature different examples and research, but, by design, share several of the same tools. We suggest choosing only one of Andy’s sessions unless you are okay with the overlapping content.

Do you wish your team was more cohesive, more enjoyable, and performed at a higher level?

In this eye-opening and practical session, you’ll learn:

• What psychological safety is, and why it matters more than talent or motivation
• How “crucibles” work, and why adversity is the fast track to a stronger team
• The essential role of “rethinking” in developing humble, driven team members
• How to improve individual accountability and team dynamics in a simple, blameless way

Great teams don’t happen by accident. They happen through a clear framework, actionable tools, and deliberate practice. If you’re ready to take your team to the next level, this session can help.

All attendees will receive a free membership to a special online site so you can continue applying what you learned after the session ends.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

You can’t lead without followers, but getting them requires more than your charisma, talent, and authority. Followers are also driven by their own powerful psychological motivations which are often ignored in business settings. In this session, participants will learn about the power of transference, or the emotional glue that binds leaders and their followers. Transference comes in many guises and is also subtle in its workings. Learning to identify transference in professional settings will bring you one step closer to building better relationships and achieving goals. As a result of participating in this session, you will also have an opportunity to take a personality test which provides clues about your own behavior patterns and how this might impact opportunities given to you in the workplace.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

With limited other resources, clients are turning to their financial professionals for advice on Social Security. Advisors who can provide education and guidance on Social Security as part of the retirement planning process are more likely than their peers to retain retiring clients, grow share of wallet and gain referrals.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the fundamental rules
• Recognize the options and benefits available
• Incorporate the collection decision into retirement plans

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm

The skills to manage mental illness are different than the skills needed to cultivate well-being. This session focuses on 5 research-based skills that anyone can use to cultivate well-being and take a proactive approach to preventing mental stress and illness. While Employee Assistance Programs focus on issues that people have at the workplace, there are little resources available for those of us who do not have issues however wish to harness their well-being and resultantly their performance. The 5 skills discussed in this session are ones that can be immediately practiced, applied, and taught to others. These skills capitalize on our mental, emotional, and behavioral attributes so participants learn to harness their own resources to feel better, function more effectively, and increase their well-being.

Participants will learn:

• To view their resourcefulness in a new way.
• Obtain a primer on the science of well-being.
• 5 skills to help harness their well-being.
• Learn how to generate optimism, capitalize on their strengths, and manage their emotions.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 3:20pm

You can’t drive a car looking in the rear view mirror.  Traditional metrics are backward looking.  They keep score. What did you do last month, last quarter and last year?  Companies need to keep score to assess performance: growth, margin, return on equity, and total shareholder return are common metrics.  They do not tell you how the company will do in the future. Value is about the future.  In the age of agile, companies need to increasingly start putting forward looking and predictive metrics on their dashboards.  The Agile Dashboard was researched and developed to help organizations address this gap. The Agile Dashboard looks at three categories of metrics: Speed, Interaction Time and Pivot. These are critical elements for leaders to monitor whether their organizations are prepared to operate successfully in an uncertain future.  This session will explain each of the three sections of the Agile Dashboard, provide metrics for each and share examples of their applicability to financial organizations.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 10:35am and 3:20pm

Thriving at work, high life satisfaction, happiness and resilience all require the same capacity:  the capacity to navigate difficult moments well. Our conversation considers research from the fields of Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry, fields which examine who we are at our best as individuals, teams and organizations. We’ll explore tools and perspectives that enable us to handle inner conflict, difficult conversations and moments of extraordinary stress wisely. These are tools that bring mindful awareness to any one moment and change that moment into one of opportunity; opportunity in which we not only address the stressor directly, but leverage that very conflict to become more authentic, more rooted in our strengths and values, more clear about the road ahead and more of our better selves. In other words, better leaders. Attendees will leave with experience practicing mindful pausing, identifying one’s ideal self, and leveraging positive change in themselves and others in the most challenging moments.

Learning Objectives:

• Define the benefits of the Positive Psychology/Appreciative Inquiry approach to stress

• Understand the research and practice behind the Ideal Selves Model
• Apply mindful pausing to leverage resilience and clarity under stress
• Examine the contagion effect to teams of becoming more one’s best self

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Going beyond a narrow focus on product or service innovation, this session will highlight the importance of thinking through the overall system of activities that a company uses to create, deliver, and capture value; i.e., its business model. After defining the business model concept and discussing its component parts, we will discuss how innovative models can function as a source of advantage that is hard for competitors to understand and imitate. The session will also introduce tools that leaders can use to map their organization’s current business model and think-through opportunities to innovate in ways that can unlock value without (necessarily) altering the firm’s core product or service mix. We will then discuss key questions that leaders should ask as they consider if and when to pursue various innovation opportunities. Throughout, the conversation will anchor on examples of firms that built their competitive position around innovative new business models, and others that updated existing their models to thrive in the face of competition and uncertainty.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand what a business model is, and how it can be used as a unique source of advantage
• Identify what types of innovation approaches require different types of business model approaches

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

The old saying that change is the only constant seems truer than ever.  How can we help our organizations not only survive, but thrive in moments when volatility and uncertainty threaten to derail even the best-laid strategic plans?  In this session, we will learn practical strategies for building resilience, drawn from timeless social science insights about human behavior, and applied to current, real-world business challenges. We will explore resilience at three levels: 1) Building individual resilience in the self and others to weather challenging moments; 2) Building team resilience to keep people motivated and engaged to solve complex challenges; 3) Building organizational resilience to maintain the adaptability and innovative habits needed to stay ahead of the curve. Through a combination of evidence-based frameworks, engaging group activities and dialogue, this session will help participants at any level of the organization build and maintain grit and agility.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) crosses a broad spectrum of ethnicities, gender identity, perspectives, etc.  We are continuously evolving in our ability to meet the needs of our workforce and organizations as we leverage DEI as a business/national competitive advantage.

Artificial intelligence will significantly impact our organizations and capabilities in a constantly evolving environment.  What is our role in defining and implementing responsible AI?

The course agenda includes:

• What is DEI
• Understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Benefits of Responsible AI
• Potential Concerns in AI Implementation
• The Role of Leadership in Responsible AI Implementation

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

In many industries today, and especially in finance, organizations operate in ecosystems made up of powerful and highly interconnected stakeholders. Companies that figure out how to manage this complexity will enjoy a powerful competitive advantage in finding and selecting innovations. Participants will be introduced to a tool-based ideation process that helps them think through ways of innovating their companies’ product or service offerings. The methodology allows managers to identify innovation growth opportunities and select insightfully among them, thus ensuring that the company is responsive not only to the pressing needs of the direct customers, but also to the needs and concerns of the other stakeholders in its ecosystem. The session will conclude with a workshop that allows participants to apply the tools to their industry.

Learning Objectives:

• A solid conceptual understanding of ecosystem-driven innovation.
• A tool to map the needs of an organization’s ecosystem players and to strategically create ecosystem-driven advantage.
• Direct experience leveraging the tools to explore new innovation opportunities.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Survey

We all think of ourselves as good people, yet ethical lapses are common. Why? In this session, Professor Nina Strohminger takes participants on a crash course of the science behind (un)ethical behavior. The session will take an especially close look at the role played by forces we are usually unaware of. After learning about the major sources of ethical blindness, Strohminger will outline the best strategies for combatting it—from the individual to the organizational level—drawing on cases from the industry.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 3:20pm

Did you ever wonder how the firm you work for makes money?  Have you listened to your Chief Financial Officer talk about the quarterly earnings, and walk away scratching your head?  This introductory session developed for those without a financial background takes a simplified look at where the money comes from and where it goes to determine the profit (loss) announced in that last quarterly report.  Focusing on financial services firms, we will look at the businesses of our industry and how they drive the core operating activities.  In layman’s terms we will break down the income streams and expenses taking the jargon out of financial reporting.  If you would like a simple explanation of “ratios” like EBITDA, EPS, ROI, RWC and buzz words like Tier 1 Capital, deferred tax assets and non-counterparty risk, then this is the session for you.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Better understand your firm’s financial statements and the jargon around your firm’s quarterly announcements
• Know the drivers behind the business of financial services
• Have a good feel for the types of risk in our industry and how they impact your firm.

This way, the next time your firm reports earnings, you will be able to understand the rhetoric, the balance sheet, and the income statement, making you a better-informed employee.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

Why do some individuals gain support for their ideas in meetings, while others seemingly languish?  At the core of any organization’s performance are the decisions that leaders make…those financial, strategic, human resource, marketing and leadership decisions that underlie an organization’s performance. Understanding how to improve decision-making is a truly fundamental leadership requirement. In this session, we will explore typical decision “traps”–those biases in large part determined by how the human brain operates. Drawing on recent research, this session will expose participants to decision biases through short exercises and offer ways to alleviate them.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how we are all susceptible to “irrational” decisions in certain situations
• Ways to spot such biases within one’s own organization or team
• Frameworks to counteract decision biases.

Pre-Class Assignment – Assessment

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI™) is a 120-question diagnostic survey, the answers to which indicate an individual’s thinking style preferences. Our minds have preferred modes of operating that impact how we see the world, how we interpret what we see, and how we communicate with others who are also operating from their own preferred modes of thinking and speaking. Thinking preferences influence communication, decision-making, problem solving, and management styles. By understanding their thinking style preferences, participants will gain a new perspective of themselves and the people with whom they interact each day. In this HBDI session, a series of interactive exercises is used to get participants comfortable with the model, conversant about each of the 4 styles, and aware of the dangers of over-simplifying the process. This session offers a wide range of exercises and will choose a combination of exercises specific to each group’s needs. Participants will also explore when thinking styles are problematic. Through development of self-inventory, participants will learn about their own hot buttons and the hot buttons of others and develop strategies for addressing these situations in a constructive manner. During the program we also address the effects of individual and team HBDI data on some main leadership issues of our time, like enhancing our agility and creative thinking in times of fast pace change and ambiguity. This course will require a 120-question survey to be completed prior to the participants’ arrival.

Learning Objectives:

• Realize increased self-awareness by identifying their preferred thinking styles and the thinking styles of others.
• Recognize when their thinking styles are problematic and how to put corrective strategies in place to get back on course.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Short Survey

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

Today, each leader and group of leaders collectively co-create the psychological environment of safety inside their teams, their top performers, and their internal followership in day to day decision making – be it in crisis or beyond. Such environments foster the sustainable models of personal accountability & practicing foresight in decisions.

Organizations today are on the constant testing grounds of Trust, Foresight, and Empathy across internal and external stakeholders, where lived experience of leadership values alone attest for credibility.

The time-tested concept of the 7 levels of Ascending Leadership allows the organizational leadership and followership to create growth ladders while activating a unique Cultural Intelligence (CQ). Cultural intelligence (CQ) is that secret trait enables organizations to anticipate, adapt, pivot in response to fluid environments, and is often an overlooked opportunity (resulting hindsight regret) in complex times.

Pre-Class Assignment – Video Documentary (1 ½ hours)

Over 100 years ago, 28 adventurers were stranded for nearly two years in Antarctica.  Incredibly, they all survived.  Their story and that of their leader, Ernest Shackleton, evidence many of the now recognized best practices for leading through challenging times.  This session explores the story of Shackleton’s expedition, mining it for illustrations of best practices for today’s leaders trying to lead through current challenging times.

Session Design: This session is highly participative and potentially very free flowing.  The richness of the case and the breadth of its implications for leading through challenging times argues for focusing on the material that session participants deem most appropriate.  Hence, the session relies extensively on participant questions.  Pre-work will markedly increase participant ability to focus questions on case-based areas of most interest and, likely, of most use to them.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

This is a session that covers recent developments in global economic growth and innovation, with an emphasis on current events and policy applications. The session discusses the current drivers of innovation and economic growth and analyzes the strengths and challenges of financial analysis for long-term innovative investment decisions. Topics covered include: national income accounting, total factor productivity, investment in capital and labor, inflation, interest rates, monetary policy, net present value and the internal rate of return.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding current economic climate
• Implications for short and long-term investment decisions
• Assessing upcoming risks and opportunities

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Organizations are increasingly turning to data and analytics to improve how they manage people. Those analytics can provide new insights into drivers of employee performance, engagement, and attrition, allowing the development of better-informed people strategies. In this session, we explore how organizations can leverage data to inform their people decisions, discuss case studies of the successful use of analytics, as well as examining the limitations of data-informed decision-making.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

No matter how impressive an analysis is, or how high-quality your data are, it is unlikely to compel change unless stakeholders for your work understand what you have done. Some of the stakeholders may not understand all the details of the analytics but they do want evidence of the analysis. This is where stories based on data and analytics become more convincing than those based on anecdotes or personal experience. In this session, participants will explore how analytics can be translated into a narrative story. This session will build on the live case, which will be continuing throughout the program. Participants will learn how to take results of a rigorous analysis and develop stories that are effective tools for conveying insights.

The Teamwork simulation is an interactive, hands-on group activity.  The brief description below is vague on purpose to not give too information and cloud the onsite experience.  This simulation is done in 2-parts.  Participants will go through the simulation then have a debrief session later in the day.  The simulation and debrief sessions will be linked on the registration form.  When signing up for this simulation you will automatically be assigned to the debrief session at 3:20pm.

Here’s past feedback from previous SII participants:

“Loved this, very engaging and informative!”

“Sudev is the best facilitator I have encountered. He was extremely knowledgeable, observant, and engaging. This could have been a 3 part because the debrief was so engaging.”

“Professor was incredibly engaging, very attentive and encouraged class participation. This double session was most definitely at the top of my list.”

“Great session. So interesting and challenged my thinking about teamwork and managing through situations.”

“I really took away a lot from this simulation and it was a positive team environment where you learn by doing.”

“It’s so great that we spent dedicated time to debrief and learn from the team exercise.  I found the real power is learning through where we failed.”

This simulation explores underlying individual and group dynamics when working in a team tasked with accomplishing goals. How do you effectively solve problems and make decisions when thrown difficult and unexpected challenges? By participating in this interactive session, you will experience firsthand how decision making by leaders and team members affects team performance in situations characterized by time pressure and competition.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Optional Reading

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

Each of us is born with our own, unique DNA, and that DNA provides clues about who we are, where we came from and relationships we share.  Have you ever thought about your leader DNA?  Most of us do not take the time to thoughtfully discover our personal leader identity.  In this course, General Halstead will lead an interactive discussion on how to intentionally, deliberately, and introspectively look inward in order to more effectively understand and define yourself as a leader.  She will take you through a values exercise to help narrow your focus on what really are the most important values that define who you are, what you believe, where you invest your personal energy and how you execute.  Values are not mere words; they must be defined, lived out and shared.  Given the premise that life is a journey, we can also say that our development as a leader is a journey.  General Halstead will share some of her own journey as she prepared for a year in Iraq, knowing it would be the cumulative years of growing as a leader that would make the difference on how she would survive and thrive in combat, and lead her team from good to great on the battlefield.  She will devote reflective time in the session for participants to focus on the major turning points (personal/professional) that have helped shaped their leader identity, and share them with each other.  Our individual values, aligned with our behaviors and turning points, shape our leader identity and our purpose as a leader.  Throughout the session, General Halstead will share effective leadership tools she used in her almost 3 decades of military service, and that she now provides across the corporate and academic sectors.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify top 5 values that define you as a person.
• Create your journey timeline with significant turning points.
• Share how your values and your life’s turning points have shaped your leader identity.
• Realize and understand the power of your individual leader identity and life’s purpose.

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm and Tuesday at 8:45am

In this session we will introduce a scenario-based methodology for strategic planning under conditions of high uncertainty.  Topics covered will include:

• Why great companies fail and how successful firms respond to change
• The value of optionality and peripheral vision
• The need for challenging old mental models
• Capturing strategic uncertainty through scenarios
• Choosing the right battles through strategic segmentation
• Developing a strategic vision from robust, flexible capabilities

Learning Objectives:

• To recognize the pitfalls associated with planning for a single future
• To learn a systematic process that enables the construction of future industry scenarios
• To learn how to use scenarios in developing strategic competencies and options

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

This session will help you execute your global strategy. Once you’ve determined where in the world you’ll conduct key activities for maximum profit, your biggest challenge is to coordinate the work of the people and teams across the world who will conduct those key activities. How do you ensure that your global teams have the right people? How do you manage cultural, language, and time zone differences? How do you structure your global organization depending on whether you’re following a localized vs. a globalized strategy? You’ll leave this session with the tools to answer these critical questions. This session can be taken in tandem with “Global Strategy 1- Design” or on its own. 

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

AI – from predictive technologies to Large Language Models like ChatGPT – are likely to significantly impact workforce needs in the coming years. This session briefly reviews the capabilities of these technologies, with an emphasis on understanding how they impact the demand for skills in jobs. We discuss the frameworks being used by policy makers, academics, and NGO’s to assess the types of jobs that will be in demand in an AI-driven future, and those that are likely to experience a decline. We will conclude with a transformation exercise in which we take common jobs in your industry and redesign them for an AI future.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am and 3:20pm

Thriving at work, high life satisfaction, happiness and resilience all require the same capacity:  the capacity to navigate difficult moments well. Our conversation considers research from the fields of Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry, fields which examine who we are at our best as individuals, teams and organizations. We’ll explore tools and perspectives that enable us to handle inner conflict, difficult conversations and moments of extraordinary stress wisely. These are tools that bring mindful awareness to any one moment and change that moment into one of opportunity; opportunity in which we not only address the stressor directly, but leverage that very conflict to become more authentic, more rooted in our strengths and values, more clear about the road ahead and more of our better selves. In other words, better leaders. Attendees will leave with experience practicing mindful pausing, identifying one’s ideal self, and leveraging positive change in themselves and others in the most challenging moments.

Learning Objectives:

• Define the benefits of the Positive Psychology/Appreciative Inquiry approach to stress

• Understand the research and practice behind the Ideal Selves Model
• Apply mindful pausing to leverage resilience and clarity under stress
• Examine the contagion effect to teams of becoming more one’s best self

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

Please note participants will be on their feet for most of the session.

In this experiential session, participants explore behaviors that improve collaborative relationships. The session introduces practical, applicable skills for increasing the ability to effectively communicate with others — to hear and be heard.  The session is ‘serious play’ – fun exercises with powerful results.

Learning Objectives:

• Explore tools to enhance one’s ability to be fully present, focused and energized while working with others.
• Practice effective listening skills.
• Practice releasing inner scripts and agendas and, instead, build upon others’ ideas.
• Explore the concept of ‘true collaboration’ in equal partnership toward reaching a goal.
• Explore the concept ‘Perception Overrides Intention’
• Explore non-verbal communication (body language)
• Practice skills in Emotional Congruency (matching content with delivery), in order to enhance authenticity and build trust
• Explore the benefits of ‘tolerance for the unknown’
• Practice the skill of recovering smoothly from mistakes
• Increase ability to collaboratively innovate.
• Increase confidence in spontaneous behavior.
• Increase effectiveness in workplace collaboration by recognizing one’s strengths and challenges.
• Explore the benefits of ‘transparency’ and ‘curiosity’ to connect and build trust with others.

Throughout the session, participants experience a variety of activities, including exercises based in improvisational theater training.  No one is singled out — all exercises are performed in large or small groups.  The facilitator creates a comfortable atmosphere in which all participants are supported and encouraged.  Every exercise is debriefed to maximize its application to the participants’ unique needs.  The result is positive transformation of the participants’ communication skill-set.

Why do certain products, services, and ideas catch on, and how can we use these insights to make our own stuff more successful?  This session will reveal the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six simple principles drive all sorts of things to become popular. If you’ve ever wondered why certain information gets shared, brands get more word of mouth, or ideas take off, this session explains why, and shows how to leverage these concepts to make your own products and ideas catch on.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to leverage presented concepts to generate more word of mouth and referrals.
• Learn actionable techniques for helping information spread—for designing messages, ideas, and information that people will share.

Also offered Thursday at 3:20pm

**We want to highlight for you that there is content overlap between this session and Andy’s other sessions. They feature different examples and research, but, by design, share several of the same tools. We suggest choosing only one of Andy’s sessions unless you are okay with the overlapping content.

Crucibles are challenging experiences that forge more humble and effective leaders — or cause leaders and organizations to melt down and fail.

We all face crucibles. In this session, you’ll explore the dynamics of crucibles in a way that is both illuminating and actionable.

Bringing together social psychology, evolutionary biology, and leadership studies, this program gives you a framework and toolkit to navigate crucibles better, both at work and at home.

Learning Objectives:

• How crucibles work, and why crisis alone isn’t enough to produce positive change
• How neurobiology, evolution, and modern life are combining to make “super-crucibles”
• Why most common approaches to personal, organizational, and social change fail
• How to leverage crucibles to produce better outcomes for everyone

All attendees will receive a free membership to a special online site so you can continue applying what you learned after the session ends.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm

The 21st century has and will continue to see a revolution in the way we think about money. In this session, financial historian and legal scholar Peter Conti-Brown will provide an overview of what money is, where it comes from, and where it is going. He will focus on revolutions to the payment system, including central bank digital currency, fintech innovations, and crypto currency; what new regulatory approaches to fintech will mean; and what entrepreneurial options you should watch in 2024 and beyond.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

This session will cover the fundamentals of Exchange Traded Funds and the parties and stakeholders that comprise the structure of these funds and how they operate including index providers, ETF managers, Authorized Participants (AP’s) and market makers.  In will cover reference the history and industrial organization of the industry including size, numbers and characteristics of today’s ETF’s as well as their diversity.  The session will discuss the advantages and disadvantages and pros and cons of ETFS and how they compare to other investment vehicles such as mutual funds.  Finally, a number of “hot button issues” will be presented including active ETF’s, levered ETF’s, and flash crashes.

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm and 3:20pm

Effective leaders recognize they must carefully manage both the external and internal environment.  They inspire, provide clarity of purpose, seek diversity of thought and contrary views, and build a culture of trust.  Leaders also develop a keen awareness of external forces and turn threats into opportunities by building an organizational capability of adaptability.  In short, leaders build a PERCEPTIVE organization that is poised to achieve and maintain sustainable positive results.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the importance of building a perceptive organization to meet today’s business challenges
• Articulate specific leadership behaviors that can create an appropriate vigilant culture
• Better prepare for an uncertain future by building agility into their strategy

Also offered Thursday at 1:30pm

Chris Maxwell’s research shows that world-class mountain guides embody six key leadership strengths, and that these same strengths have a significant impact when applied within organizations.  From lessons learned from his travels with expert guides on mountain peaks and high trails around the world, Maxwell reveals that guides are socially intelligent, adaptable, empowering, trust-builders, risk-aware, and focused on the big picture.  Organizational leaders who model these six leadership strengths will build more effective teams, actively support the vision of the organization, and uplift the people who work to make that vision a reality.  Session participants will have an opportunity to reflect on the six leadership strengths of guides and complete a self-assessment.  Chris’ book, Lead Like a Guide:  How World-Class Mountain Guides Inspire Us to Be Better Leaders was published by Praeger in 2016.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the six leadership strengths of world-class guides
• Explain how these strengths relate to professional organizations
• Identify opportunities for application within your own profession

Check your mobile app for location.

The only constant in life is change. Join Chris Perry, President of Broadridge, as he shares real-life stories of successful change drawn from more than 30 years driving transformations in the financial services industry. In this interactive discussion Chris will share lessons learned on the job as well as in his personal life. From the start of his career in front office wealth management software to his role today leading a global $25B market cap company serving 25,000 clients, Chris continues to be at the center of changes impacting how financial firms drive growth and innovate.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 10:35am

AI – from predictive technologies to Large Language Models like ChatGPT – are likely to significantly impact workforce needs in the coming years. This session briefly reviews the capabilities of these technologies, with an emphasis on understanding how they impact the demand for skills in jobs. We discuss the frameworks being used by policy makers, academics, and NGO’s to assess the types of jobs that will be in demand in an AI-driven future, and those that are likely to experience a decline. We will conclude with a transformation exercise in which we take common jobs in your industry and redesign them for an AI future.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

The old saying that change is the only constant seems truer than ever.  How can we help our organizations not only survive, but thrive in moments when volatility and uncertainty threaten to derail even the best-laid strategic plans?  In this session, we will learn practical strategies for building resilience, drawn from timeless social science insights about human behavior, and applied to current, real-world business challenges. We will explore resilience at three levels: 1) Building individual resilience in the self and others to weather challenging moments; 2) Building team resilience to keep people motivated and engaged to solve complex challenges; 3) Building organizational resilience to maintain the adaptability and innovative habits needed to stay ahead of the curve. Through a combination of evidence-based frameworks, engaging group activities and dialogue, this session will help participants at any level of the organization build and maintain grit and agility.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Everyone has something they want to change. Advisors want to change the client’s minds and leaders want to change organizations. Employees want to change their boss’ minds, Startups want to change industries, and non-profits want to change the world. But change is hard. We push and push, but often nothing happens. Could there be a better way? The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind introduces a revolutionary approach to change. Successful change isn’t about pushing harder or exerting more energy. It’s about removing barriers. Overcoming resistance by reducing friction and lowering the hurdles to action.  Discover the five hidden factors that impede change, and how by mitigating them, you can change anything.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn why pushing doesn’t work, and what does
• Learn the five key barriers that stymie change, and how to mitigate them.

Also offered Thursday at 10:35am

Please note participants will be on their feet for most of the session.

In this experiential session, participants explore behaviors that improve collaborative relationships. The session introduces practical, applicable skills for increasing the ability to effectively communicate with others — to hear and be heard.  The session is ‘serious play’ – fun exercises with powerful results.

Learning Objectives:

• Explore tools to enhance one’s ability to be fully present, focused and energized while working with others.
• Practice effective listening skills.
• Practice releasing inner scripts and agendas and, instead, build upon others’ ideas.
• Explore the concept of ‘true collaboration’ in equal partnership toward reaching a goal.
• Explore the concept ‘Perception Overrides Intention’
• Explore non-verbal communication (body language)
• Practice skills in Emotional Congruency (matching content with delivery), in order to enhance authenticity and build trust
• Explore the benefits of ‘tolerance for the unknown’
• Practice the skill of recovering smoothly from mistakes
• Increase ability to collaboratively innovate.
• Increase confidence in spontaneous behavior.
• Increase effectiveness in workplace collaboration by recognizing one’s strengths and challenges.
• Explore the benefits of ‘transparency’ and ‘curiosity’ to connect and build trust with others.

Throughout the session, participants experience a variety of activities, including exercises based in improvisational theater training.  No one is singled out — all exercises are performed in large or small groups.  The facilitator creates a comfortable atmosphere in which all participants are supported and encouraged.  Every exercise is debriefed to maximize its application to the participants’ unique needs.  The result is positive transformation of the participants’ communication skill-set.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Wednesday at 8:45am

Everybody tells you that you need to network to get ahead in life and business. They also tell you that you need to be more innovative and creative. But you typically get no advice or, worst, bad advice on how to do both of these things effectively. This session will help you realize how you can be wise about building and maintaining professional social networks to help you discover and develop novel ideas. It is meant to offer a foundation for getting the most out of the relationships you develop throughout your career.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Tuesday at 8:45am and 1:30pm

Creating a good business case is necessary to help leaders make good decisions on allocating resources.  A good business plan is also a blueprint for success.  This module will explain the key elements of a business case and discuss how to evaluate and measure business impact.  Four key elements such as the market and business opportunity, link to competitive advantage, communicating a business / economic / operating model and ability to implement will be discussed.  A shark-tank like exercise will be used as a case exercise to give practice on developing executive summaries of ideas to be funded. We will also explore the concept of risk to understand and communicate the uncertainties of a business case using a real world case example.  This will be a practical session focused on the qualitative elements that can be used to better inform and evaluate the business cases you submit and review.

Pre-Class Assignment – Assessment

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI™) is a 120-question diagnostic survey, the answers to which indicate an individual’s thinking style preferences. Our minds have preferred modes of operating that impact how we see the world, how we interpret what we see, and how we communicate with others who are also operating from their own preferred modes of thinking and speaking. Thinking preferences influence communication, decision-making, problem solving, and management styles. By understanding their thinking style preferences, participants will gain a new perspective of themselves and the people with whom they interact each day. In this HBDI session, a series of interactive exercises is used to get participants comfortable with the model, conversant about each of the 4 styles, and aware of the dangers of over-simplifying the process. This session offers a wide range of exercises and will choose a combination of exercises specific to each group’s needs. Participants will also explore when thinking styles are problematic. Through development of self-inventory, participants will learn about their own hot buttons and the hot buttons of others and develop strategies for addressing these situations in a constructive manner. During the program we also address the effects of individual and team HBDI data on some main leadership issues of our time, like enhancing our agility and creative thinking in times of fast pace change and ambiguity. This course will require a 120-question survey to be completed prior to the participants’ arrival.

Learning Objectives:

• Realize increased self-awareness by identifying their preferred thinking styles and the thinking styles of others.
• Recognize when their thinking styles are problematic and how to put corrective strategies in place to get back on course.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Short Survey

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

Today, each leader and group of leaders collectively co-create the psychological environment of safety inside their teams, their top performers, and their internal followership in day to day decision making – be it in crisis or beyond. Such environments foster the sustainable models of personal accountability & practicing foresight in decisions.

Organizations today are on the constant testing grounds of Trust, Foresight, and Empathy across internal and external stakeholders, where lived experience of leadership values alone attest for credibility.

The time-tested concept of the 7 levels of Ascending Leadership allows the organizational leadership and followership to create growth ladders while activating a unique Cultural Intelligence (CQ). Cultural intelligence (CQ) is that secret trait enables organizations to anticipate, adapt, pivot in response to fluid environments, and is often an overlooked opportunity (resulting hindsight regret) in complex times.

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

Most leaders are good at focusing on short-term requirements such as next quarter’s results or current competitor moves. The problem is that in times of change and uncertainty, short-term initiatives leave entities vulnerable to missing or underplaying dramatic market changes or emergent new competitors. Based on the work by Paul Schoemaker and George Day, as detailed in their recent book, See Sooner, Act Faster: How Vigilant Leaders Thrive in an Era of Digital Turbulence, this seminar will outline how vigilant leaders enable their organizations to:

• Monitor diverse inputs
• Combine disparate inputs into longer-term, more robust strategic choices
• Explore what it means to be a “vigilant leader”
• Outline the components to a broad monitoring system, taking precautions against unexpected events
• Learn ways to translate such foresight into longer-term, strategic choices

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

On 9/11/01, a monumental tragedy ripped through the FDNY, one of the world’s most renowned fire departments. Leadership challenges abounded that day and deep into the future. The ongoing day to day challenges presented by serving so massive and complex a city as New York continued even as did the challenge of addressing first how to recover, then how to rebuild and finally how to renew over the coming months and, truly, years: Should the FDNY seek to restore what had been or should it build something different?  Wharton faculty and leadership senior fellow Greg Shea and retired FDNY captain and 9/11 first responder Paul Brown draw on over 60 hours of interviews with retired FDNY leadership and FDNY 9/11 first responders.  They offer learnings about moving through crisis and ‘carrying on’ to organizational renewal.  The session will concentrate on participant questions and explore decisions, mindsets, and approaches taken by the FDNY, especially in those areas that participants see as most relevant to them in our post pandemic times.

Session design: The session is highly participative and potentially very free flowing. Participant questions will determine the focus of the session.  The wealth of material and hard-won learnings captured in the research means that the session can move in any number of directions, again, depending upon participant questions.  Reading several brief articles in advance will facilitate participants drilling down into those aspects of this story of potentially most consequence to them.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Our thoughts heavily influence our behavior. Having deliberate frameworks to organize our thoughts
can thus help influence our behavior for the better. This session is a research-based introduction to such
frameworks. The skills learned in the module are a steppingstone to sustainable behavioral change,
supporting ways in which people can thrive despite adversity. The module targets three of the
researched mental frameworks that help build resilience, improve mental health, and help counter
stress. The techniques are also useful to those seeking to improve engagement at work. The hands-on
module is designed to help participants practice skills in class and leave with easy to use tools that can
be practically applied in their lives.

Module Overview:

The module would be particularly useful for anyone who is having difficulty bouncing back from
adversity, facing stress, or has a hard time coping with work demands. The workshop is geared to
develop skills that are not traditionally taught in business curriculum, however, are necessary in business and personal life.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

This session will provide a mid-level treatment of ETF’s.  After a review of ETF’s, the industry and its recent growth, the session will review recent development. Covered will be a discussion of Active ETF’s, factor-based ETF’s, Index-Mining and back testing, ETF’s and the availability of Alpha, ETF cost of ownership and trading, and the effects of ETF growth on markets.  The session will conclude with a view of the future in the industry.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

No matter how impressive an analysis is, or how high-quality your data are, it is unlikely to compel change unless stakeholders for your work understand what you have done. Some of the stakeholders may not understand all the details of the analytics but they do want evidence of the analysis. This is where stories based on data and analytics become more convincing than those based on anecdotes or personal experience. In this session, participants will explore how analytics can be translated into a narrative story. This session will build on the live case, which will be continuing throughout the program. Participants will learn how to take results of a rigorous analysis and develop stories that are effective tools for conveying insights.

CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

In a world that calls out for repair, companies are increasingly called upon to engage in initiatives that deliver meaningful social impact. This session builds on a growing body of academic research that shows how firms can leverage these initiatives as a source of strategic advantage. After detailing the varied pathways that social initiatives can work through to benefit the firm—particularly among a younger generation of stakeholders who seek to integrate impact throughout their personal and professional lives—we will discuss sets of tools that leaders can use to more fully understand their company’s impacts and press the advantages that they create. The session will also touch on the unique challenges that firms face due to the growing polarization of many social issues, and how to navigate this potentially fraught landscape.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain knowledge about pathways through which socially responsible practices affect financial performance
• Understand the difference between ESG investing and Impact Investing, as well as key trends in the latter
• Understand how the outcomes of social responsibility vary for polarizing and uncertain issues

Also offered Tuesday at 3:20pm and Wednesday at 3:20pm

(Previously titled Strategies for Life Success)

When individuals understand how to get the best out of themselves, they can draw out the best in their team members and peers. Regrettably, most people fail to invest time to be self-reflective and create meaningful goals and then hold themselves accountable for progress towards those goals. In this session we will review the fundamental elements of creating a more happy, balanced, and successful life.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify your most deeply held personal core values
• Develop your unique definition of success
• Know your purpose and how it aligns with your business
• Understand and apply skills that reduce your stress and anxiety
• Create a road map for how you will improve both personally and professionally

Also offered Thursday at 10:35am

Chris Maxwell’s research shows that world-class mountain guides embody six key leadership strengths, and that these same strengths have a significant impact when applied within organizations.  From lessons learned from his travels with expert guides on mountain peaks and high trails around the world, Maxwell reveals that guides are socially intelligent, adaptable, empowering, trust-builders, risk-aware, and focused on the big picture.  Organizational leaders who model these six leadership strengths will build more effective teams, actively support the vision of the organization, and uplift the people who work to make that vision a reality.  Session participants will have an opportunity to reflect on the six leadership strengths of guides and complete a self-assessment.  Chris’ book, Lead Like a Guide:  How World-Class Mountain Guides Inspire Us to Be Better Leaders was published by Praeger in 2016.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the six leadership strengths of world-class guides
• Explain how these strengths relate to professional organizations
• Identify opportunities for application within your own profession

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Managing people effectively isn’t just about getting a few things right. It’s about having an overall vision for how you are going to build and buy a winning team, that also maps out why those people will want to come work with you, and stay working with you. And it’s about being able to deliver on that strategy. In this session, we will discuss the variety of different strategies that people follow, and work through the different approaches that might work in different kinds of settings. Through examples, discussions and exercises, we aim to help participants map out what success looks like in how they manage their people, setting up subsequent examination of how to implement their approach.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Pre-Class Assignment – Optional Reading

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am

Each of us is born with our own, unique DNA, and that DNA provides clues about who we are, where we came from and relationships we share.  Have you ever thought about your leader DNA?  Most of us do not take the time to thoughtfully discover our personal leader identity.  In this course, General Halstead will lead an interactive discussion on how to intentionally, deliberately, and introspectively look inward in order to more effectively understand and define yourself as a leader.  She will take you through a values exercise to help narrow your focus on what really are the most important values that define who you are, what you believe, where you invest your personal energy and how you execute.  Values are not mere words; they must be defined, lived out and shared.  Given the premise that life is a journey, we can also say that our development as a leader is a journey.  General Halstead will share some of her own journey as she prepared for a year in Iraq, knowing it would be the cumulative years of growing as a leader that would make the difference on how she would survive and thrive in combat, and lead her team from good to great on the battlefield.  She will devote reflective time in the session for participants to focus on the major turning points (personal/professional) that have helped shaped their leader identity, and share them with each other.  Our individual values, aligned with our behaviors and turning points, shape our leader identity and our purpose as a leader.  Throughout the session, General Halstead will share effective leadership tools she used in her almost 3 decades of military service, and that she now provides across the corporate and academic sectors.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify top 5 values that define you as a person.
• Create your journey timeline with significant turning points.
• Share how your values and your life’s turning points have shaped your leader identity.
• Realize and understand the power of your individual leader identity and life’s purpose.

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Exercise

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a critical component for effective leadership and a significant contributor to excelling in the workplace. The good news is, regardless of one’s starting point, we can improve EI skills and abilities by thinking intelligently about emotions and using emotions to better think intelligently. To this end, using exercises and clips, participants engage in learning, practicing, and improving each of the EI components, with the goal of better understanding how to improve reading, engaging and leading oneself and others for the long term.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding and increasing Emotional Intelligence
• Using Emotional Intelligence to enhance organizational interactions and engagement by better understand others as well as our own cognitions and actions

Pre-Class Assignment – Reading

Everyone in strategy is saying that the key to growth, even just survival, is via continuous and rapid innovation. But the real key to growth via profitable innovation is the strategic development and management of your knowledge: the insights of your employees, your technology, your core competences, and your intellectual property.  This session will provide you with the foundation from which to prosper in this, the knowledge age. It will give you specific tools and frameworks to map your critical knowledge, design a program to strategically develop your knowledge, and then exploit it to successfully grow your organization.

This is a double session which concludes with a workshop that allows participants to apply the tools to their industry.

Learning Objectives:

• A solid conceptual understanding of how to create and strategically manage competitive knowledge.
• A tool to assess knowledge-based advantage and to map and develop an organization’s portfolio of critical knowledge assets.
• Direct experience leveraging the tool in a hands-on workshop.

Pre-Class Assignment – Assessment

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm and Tuesday at 1:30pm

This workshop will help strengthen your influence and persuasion skills.  Everybody needs these skills to build momentum for important initiatives, achieve organizational alignment, and implement strategies. Through a series of interactive discussions and role-plays, you will answer four key questions in this workshop: What are the steps that led to buy-in?  What is your communication style and how do you use to engage stakeholders?  How do you make your ideas simple and compelling? How do you generate lasting commitment? The workshop content is drawn from the book The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin), co-authored by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa. This class will require pre-work to be completed prior to the participants’ arrival.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the different channels of influence and how to use them effectively.
• Optimize each message so that it resonates stakeholders’ style and interests.
• Assess your progress on real problems you bring to the workshop and position yourself to see immediate results.
• Map the political landscape of your organization to see where the landmines are buried and where your allies can help you.
• Experience enhanced self-awareness, including emotional intelligence.
• Enhance the ability to assemble winning coalitions.

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Thursday at 8:45am and 10:35am

Thriving at work, high life satisfaction, happiness and resilience all require the same capacity:  the capacity to navigate difficult moments well. Our conversation considers research from the fields of Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry, fields which examine who we are at our best as individuals, teams and organizations. We’ll explore tools and perspectives that enable us to handle inner conflict, difficult conversations and moments of extraordinary stress wisely. These are tools that bring mindful awareness to any one moment and change that moment into one of opportunity; opportunity in which we not only address the stressor directly, but leverage that very conflict to become more authentic, more rooted in our strengths and values, more clear about the road ahead and more of our better selves. In other words, better leaders. Attendees will leave with experience practicing mindful pausing, identifying one’s ideal self, and leveraging positive change in themselves and others in the most challenging moments.

Learning Objectives:

• Define the benefits of the Positive Psychology/Appreciative Inquiry approach to stress

• Understand the research and practice behind the Ideal Selves Model
• Apply mindful pausing to leverage resilience and clarity under stress
• Examine the contagion effect to teams of becoming more one’s best self

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Hybrid working arrangements can be daunting for those about to adopt them and challenging for those who already have. But the good news is that we’re learning quickly where the biggest obstacles lie and how to minimize them in advance and manage them as they come up. The most common challenges related to hybrid work fall under the “5C challenges”: communication, coordination, connection, creativity, and culture. In this session, we will start by understanding the five challenges, use a 5C’s checklist to assess where you’re at and where to go from there. The checklist is designed to help leaders tackle and prioritize the most common challenges of hybrid working.

Also offered Thursday at 10:35am

**We want to highlight for you that there is content overlap between this session and Andy’s other sessions. They feature different examples and research, but, by design, share several of the same tools. We suggest choosing only one of Andy’s sessions unless you are okay with the overlapping content.

Crucibles are challenging experiences that forge more humble and effective leaders — or cause leaders and organizations to melt down and fail.

We all face crucibles. In this session, you’ll explore the dynamics of crucibles in a way that is both illuminating and actionable.

Bringing together social psychology, evolutionary biology, and leadership studies, this program gives you a framework and toolkit to navigate crucibles better, both at work and at home.

Learning Objectives:

• How crucibles work, and why crisis alone isn’t enough to produce positive change
• How neurobiology, evolution, and modern life are combining to make “super-crucibles”
• Why most common approaches to personal, organizational, and social change fail
• How to leverage crucibles to produce better outcomes for everyone

All attendees will receive a free membership to a special online site so you can continue applying what you learned after the session ends.

Pre-Class Assignment – Brief Video

Also offered Tuesday at 8:45am

As organizations become more complex and global, many senior leaders struggle to “think globally but act locally”. At the heart of this challenge is the need to understand the enterprise system, and cascade that understanding throughout the organization. This session explores the barriers to “enterprise thinking” and breaking down organizational silos. The participants are then given various concepts and tools to promote a stronger enterprise mindset, including those that address clarity, alignment, culture and accountability.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify elements that contribute to the “silo” mentality
• Utilize tools to promote clarity and accountability
• Understand behaviors that lead to a learning culture

CIMA®, CPWA®, CIMC®, and RMA℠ Eligible

Also offered Monday at 1:30pm

According to the World Economic Forum, we live in what is referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. Compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. It is disrupting every industry in every country and will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another.

Learning Objectives:

• Explore the unimaginable increases in computer speed and the effect it will have on your organization
• See how numerous industries are using incredibly tiny computers
• Look at how artificial intelligence and reality are changing consumer behavior
• Participate in a thought experiment about autonomous vehicles
• Discuss and debate how these various changes will directly impact your organization