I believe that offering participants the chance to work with a learning coach plays a large role in that success. People often say their day-to-day work gets in the way of committing to online learning. But if you’re required to hand in assignments to a learning coach every week, it can act as a real incentive to remain really engaged and stay the course.
Tell us how you became a learning coach for INSEAD’s Online programmes. What was your career path up until that point?
I’m originally from the Netherlands. After graduating with a business degree, I moved to London where I qualified as a chartered accountant. I started my career in the shipping industry, working my way up to become a finance director. I moved to Singapore in 2006, where I eventually became CEO of a large tanker shipping company.
About 10 years ago I undertook an Executive MBA at INSEAD. This turned out to be a life-changing experience – so much so that I decided to leave traditional corporate life altogether. Based on what I learned during the leadership development part of the programme, I reframed my career and developed what I call a ‘location-independent portfolio career’. Essentially, I transformed myself into a digital nomad, with multiple income streams that I can pursue from anywhere.
Right now, with Singapore as my base, I run an investment fund in Luxembourg and have taken on a handful of non-executive board directorships, among other things.
It’s this international experience, along with analytical, strategic and leadership skills at senior management, board and supervisory board level that I bring to my role as an INSEAD learning coach.
Can you explain a little more about what your role involves?
One of the challenges with online executive education programmes is that completion rates are generally low – in the single digits. Completion rates for INSEAD’s online programmes, by contrast, 90 per cent or higher.
I believe that offering participants the chance to work with a learning coach plays a large role in that success. People often say their day-to-day work gets in the way of committing to online learning. But if you’re required to hand in assignments to a learning coach every week, it can act as a real incentive to remain really engaged and stay the course.
Basically, the learning coach is there beside people every step of the way, keeping them focused and on track making sure they get the most out of the programme in terms of personal learning and practical outputs that they can implement straight away – it’s a unique selling point.
What kind of participants do you typically work with?
The programmes are suitable for a very wide range of executives. I’ve coached CEOs, middle managers and young entrepreneurs at the helm of start-ups, all seeking ways to gain valuable business skills. Companies can also choose to send a group and they can work through a course as a team.
I find it very satisfying to be able to work with such a range of business leaders and help make a difference to their careers. I also learn a tremendous amount myself.
The programmes offer solutions to varied challenges. Strategy in the Age of Digital Disruption can help people respond to a strategic issue in their job that they want to solve. Most industries are facing digital disruption in one form or another. Emerging Leaders in a Digital Age helps participants develop practical steps to prepare themselves for becoming better leaders in a fast-changing world.
Of course, we coaches also undergo our own professional development to help improve performance. Ratings and feedback are shared with us as well, for additional quality control.
Another unique element of INSEAD’s online programme is that participants undertake a hands-on Action Learning Project (ALP), which they can put into practice immediately. How do you help participants define their ALP learning objectives?
The ALPs certainly tie in what participants learn in a highly practical way. At the start of the programme, the learning coach will contact each participant to help them define their project scope and work with them to refine if necessary.
Very often, people tend to stay at too abstract a level. My job is to help them nail down concepts and translate the project into something concrete and do-able. We might ask them to imagine presenting the project to their boss or board and motivating for a budget to implement it.
It can sometimes be hard to define the scope up front, so we reassure people that it’s perfectly fine to ‘pivot’ a little bit and evolve the scope over the first two weeks of the programme.
Can you give an example of what an ALP might involve?
One project involved a participant from a car company overhauling its loan application process. Previously, it took two weeks for the company’s finance department to conduct the necessary credit checks and process an application. During the course of the online programme, the participant worked out a strategy to automate the process that got it down to two days. He put that into action back at work and it resulted in huge improvements in both efficiency and customer service.
With a programme like Strategy in the Age of Digital Disruption, the scope for ALPs can be very wide. It can either have an external focus (in other words, it’s applicable to people who are more customer-focused) or an internal one (for people in support roles, such as HR). Here, I’ve coached ALPs where participants from HR have tackled issues such as process automisation, or created a dashboard to help them analyse and measure staff data.
How do you deal with confidentiality in the programme?
Learning coaches sign confidentiality agreements with INSEAD and treat everything as confidential. We’re also happy to sign separate agreements directly with companies, if required.
Of course, the programme does involve sharing details of business challenges with other participants as part of the learning journey, and final projects are graded by peer review. Company names are left out and the whole submission is anonymised. So, it’s important to find a balance.
Participants can choose to opt out of the peer review, and in that case INSEAD staff are happy to grade the project. That said, we encourage participants to participate in peer review because that is also a valuable learning opportunity.
What advice would you give someone who is planning to enrol in an INSEAD online programme?
Make sure you can spare the time. While the programmes are compact and designed for busy people, they do require a certain commitment per week.
We encourage people to interact with fellow participants as much as possible. Consider forming a study group if practical – it can help you build your network and stimulate ideas.
Also, don’t hesitate to really engage with your learning coach. We’re all experienced business leaders and INSEAD alumni and we have, of course, done the programmes. So, we know what you’re going through.
Other than that, it’s really a case of the more you put in, the more you get out. The results should be very rewarding.
