The CEO as Chief Marketing Agent for Learning
The CEOs profiled here believe their role is to personally embody their organization's learning principles. Tierney of Bain sees himself as the "public face" of Bain and its Bain Virtual University. To Tierney, this means, "being a frequent contributor to business journals commenting not only on business strategy, the heart of the Bain consulting practice but also on trends in learning and knowledge management. Internally it is not uncommon for Tierney to send firm-wide e-mails announcing a new Bain Virtual University program or other key learning initiative. He also believes it is his role to clone other Bain leaders to take an active role in learning and supporting learning among their direct reports..
This public commitment to learning is also displayed by Andy Grove, Intel's chief executive. Grove wrote an entire book devoted to the subject entitled, High Output Management. In the book he shares his philosophy of commitment to employee education in the chapter entitled, "Why Training is the Boss's Job." Here, Grove describes the importance of his involvement in employee education and development as a prerequisite for the company's survival. While Intel has a relatively young workforce, most of the technologies used in Intel's blockbuster Pentium chip did not exist when the scientists and engineers finished their graduate studies. Without recruiting the best brains in the business and without continually making large investments in their education and training, Intel would not have been able to stay on the cutting edge of technology.
Beyond writing books on the importance of education and training, CEOs are also sharing their commitment to educating their workforce in the company annual report and in speeches to security analysts. A Corporate University Xchange research report, Survey of Corporate University Future Directions (involving 120 deans of top corporate education organizations) found that 57 percent of the publicly traded companies report the contribution of their education and training strategy in the company annual report. For example, Conoco, the international energy company, recently returned to the New York Stock Exchange after 17 years as a subsidiary of DuPont and in its first annual report, the company devoted several paragraphs to the contributions Conoco University has made to developing visionary leaders.