McCombs TODAY

Austin welcomes visitors from around the world in the month of March, most visibly for the South by Southwest festival. Meanwhile, Texas Executive Education hosted its own international educational event this month with an international makeup that was just as impressive.

The ESCP-EAP European School of Management in France brought to Texas an executive MBA group of 98 students representing the countries of Colombia, Morocco, Norway, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Tunisia, Korea, Mexico, India, Sweden, Georgia, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Brazil, Spain and Togo.

Titled “Leading Innovation” the weeklong program March 9-13 featured a mix of classes, high-profile speakers from industry and company visits. McCombs School faculty directing the classroom activities included Michael Brandl, John Daly, Gaylen Paulson, Raji Srinivasan and Kit Webster.

“We always look forward to hosting this international executive MBA group. This year we had South America, Africa, Asia and every country in Europe represented in the class,” said Chantal Delys, assistant dean for Executive Education. “They are an energetic, engaging and extremely smart group.”

ESCP-EAP faculty members Frederic Frery and Delphine Manceau accompanied the students to Austin. “We have a strong connection to Texas,” said Frery, noting that this is the third year they have brought a class of executive MBA students to Austin. McCombs also sends undergraduates to ESCP-EAP in an exchange program.

In America and especially within the Texas Executive Education program, Manceau said that the students enjoy a break from the more structured classroom settings of Europe and their home countries.

Manceau said that in American classrooms are less formal. “In America, there is a lot of interaction, a lot of group work,” she said. Symbolic of this formality, Frery noted that in Germany teachers often are above the students in the classroom. In American classrooms, such as those at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, the teacher is below and the rows of seats are above the teacher

Among the interactive classes in the program was Paulson’s seminar titled, “Finding Creative Solutions for Complex Problems.” The class focused on how we solve problems, as individuals and groups, and offered techniques to help improve the process. He challenged student groups with several problem-solving activities that highlighted creative solutions.

Paulson suggested most have a tendency to spend too much time searching for solutions rather than defining problems. He said people and groups usually spend 20 percent of their time defining the problem and 80 percent on coming up with solutions. “That should be flipped,” Paulson said. “We should spend 80 percent of our time on defining the problem and 20 percent on looking for solutions. Define, define, define,” he said.

Paulson also discussed the limitations of group brainstorming sessions, a common group idea-generating activity. Paulson said problems arise because basic rules of brainstorming often aren’t followed, which may lead to some members dominating with others conforming. Members of the group can be reluctant to share “crazy” ideas. Paulson said brainstorming actually may yield convergent thinking rather than divergent discussions.

A better alternative, Paulson said, was the process of “brainwriting.” In a brainwriting session, there is an individual writing portion and a group interaction portion. The group is presented with a problem and each person writes down their ideas. This is followed by a structured round-robin sharing of written ideas followed by a discussion.

“In brainwriting you capture the full energy of the group,” Paulson said.

ESCP-EAP is the result of a merger in 2000 of two institutions: ESCP, the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris, and the EAP, the École Européenne des Affaires. ESCP was founded in Paris in 1819 and is the oldest establishment dedicated to business and finance teaching in the world. Currently, the school has five campuses in Europe: Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid and Torino, Italy.

“We look forward to their visit next year,” Delys said. “It is rewarding to see how many pre-conceived ideas participants may have about our business practices evolve when they get a close look into the day-to-day running of successful American organizations.”