Given that the fees of professional trainers and educators can be prohibitive, especially if they are high profile, some organizations have formed consortia or strategic alliances in order to share the costs associated with bringing in these external trainers or educators. These collaborative efforts offer many advantages in addition to cost savings. Participants get to share ideas with and network with colleagues from other organizations and get to compare their own problems and perspectives with men and women from the same line of work, often in conjunction with the wisdom and insights being offered by the outside trainer or educator. These consortium-based arrangements have been particularly popular among organizations that share an interest in Total Quality Management and Continuous Quality Improvement.[i] Professional meetings and annual conferences are a form of inter-organizational collaboration, though formal consortia can often provide focused education or training to a targeted group of participants that have much greater impact than the keynote speeches or brief seminars and workshops offered at most association meetings.
The executive programs being offered at prestigious universities have traditionally been geared primarily for those working at the very top of the organization. High-level executives are attracted to these programs, not only because they are prestigious, but also because these organizational leaders can interact with others at a very high level. It is usually not very safe for these executives to interact with employees in their own organization and they often feel they have little to gain from training being offered by outside trainers and educators—unless these presenters have themselves recently occupied a position of considerable authority and responsibility.
The high level executives want the latest, cutting-edge concepts being offered by those who are doing the research and formulation of new ideas or by those who are enacting these ideas from the top of their own organization. In addition to attending executive programs at a major university, top-level executives are often attracted to programs that are exclusively intended for the senior executives. The Young President’s Organization (YPO) has offered programs for CEOs who run companies at a very young age, while TEC offers programs for the executives of middle-size organizations. These programs tend to blend the talents of professional trainers and educators (Source One) with mentoring and coaching programs (Source Five).
