A conversation with Professor J. B. Kurish of Goizueta Business School

Professor J. B. Kurish, Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education at Goizueta Business School – Emory University, believes that the human element is central to great leadership and is something that is a crucial part of its custom programmes. He also realises how important the human relationships between the school and its clients are for successful programmes to be delivered over the long term.

Drawing on his previous experience as an investment banker, Kurish recalls that long-term partnerships are the key to good business, and he advocates “taking advantage of when markets are not in your favour, so that you already have the relationships in place when the market does turn.” This long-term approach of nurturing client relationships and really understanding the client’s issues and challenges is key to the custom programming approach of Emory Executive Education.

Since Kurish took over as head of the Executive Education division at the Goizueta Business School, he has been keen to expand its geographic footprint, and has overseen new relationships being built in Latin America, Africa, and Europe. This has been done both through creating alliances with local institutions in those regions, taking existing North American clients into these new markets, and also bringing leaders from those areas to join programmes in Atlanta.

Equally, he has expanded the “intellectual footprint” with a broadening of the programmes offered, and by drawing on the expertise and depth of knowledge that the wider Emory University faculty can bring to custom executive education programmes for their clients. “With an increased intellectual footprint we can cover more topics that are vitally important for senior leaders” says Kurish, highlighting that Emory University has world-leading expertise in healthcare. With renowned schools of medicine, nursing, and public health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention located just off campus, Emory Executive Education has access to an extraordinary nexus of knowledge about healthcare. When combined with their strength in organisational strategy and leadership they are able to deliver custom programmes that are founded on deep knowledge of real-world challenges and new solutions in these areas. Having access to these real-world applications and dovetailing them into the curriculum makes the learning much more tangible and impactful, and allows the participants to gain enduring insight from the applied theories.

One of the major challenges facing corporations today is understanding how to handle data analysis effectively. Emory has a special expertise in delivering instruction on this, having just launched its MSBA, or Master of Science in Business Analytics. Kurish, himself a respected finance professor, sees that the challenge of the deluge of data that organisations now have available to them is an increasing one, and they have brought content from the MSBA into open and custom programmes in recent months. At Emory, the Executive Education team spend a lot of time with custom clients working through the data and identifying what is relevant and what is not.

“How do we save ourselves from drowning in all the information that is out there,” Kurish asks. “I think we need to slow ourselves down and think more broadly about the questions we need to ask. In this day and age, with all the tools that are available, and all the data that is available, it is so easy to drive for solutions. But I think we spend a lot of time driving to the wrong destinations. So what we are finding with our custom clients is that they are looking to us to help them think about how to sort out the relevant information.”

“And this is where I think we do excellent work in talking with executives and assessing what they need… and they appreciate it, and say ‘wow, we knew there was something but we really didn’t have it defined very well’ and they are open to us pushing back on them and saying ‘here’s what we perceive you really need when we dig a little deeper’. This allows us to build a better programme with the client in mind. We very much stress the importance of doing joint work with a client.”

Kurish’s conversation loops back time and again to the importance of relationships; the connections that grow between participants in programmes and that endure afterwards; the trust fostered between faculty and participants; and the vitally strong relationship between programme provider and client – all of which are needed to create impactful programme results. He is clear that Emory’s relatively small size, compared to some of their competitors in this top field of providers, allows these relationships to be nurtured more successfully. “We really believe that we are a family and an intimate community of scholars and leadership professionals. We consistently get evaluated as being excellent at that. We think the small size really helps us do a better job. We're great on the tough analytics – you need to have the technical skills but, although those are necessary, they are not sufficient conditions for you to be successful as a leader. You need to really know how to deal with individuals: small teams, big teams, and organisations. Personal relationships count in the end.”

Source: Creating High Performing Teams by Roddy Millar