How to Master Service Performance Techniques During an Executive Education in Operational Excellence

Webster Vienna Private University is excited to announce the launch of our new Executive Education training course in Operational Excellence. We were able to chat with Program Director Alan Noble, who got into the details of exactly what participants can expect. Alan Noble is an ex-banker who has over 40 years of experience in financial institutions and management training. His goal with this  one-week course is to “take something that has been successfully delivered commercially for the last 20 years within corporate management development programs, and offer it via the university to a new audience.”

This new Executive Education course is designed to help participants both personally and as part of a corporate training program to achieve excellence within their businesses. It helps them to address the root causes of service issues and learn how to overcome these stressful business situations and prevent a recurrence of the problems. Continue reading to get a better look at how participants can benefit from the course.

Learn to Take a Step Back to Look at the Right Information and Define the Problem

We asked Alan how this course helps professionals address issues that impact business performance. “The key here is that in order to address these things, you actually need to recognize first of all that they exist,” he started. He added that “being able to define what it is in exact terms is equally as important. So then you are tackling the root cause of an issue, rather than maybe just some of the symptoms.”

He went on to identify a common issue many professionals face. “In business,” he observed, “we spend a lot of time leaping to assumptions and conclusions because we think we’re clever. But what this program is saying is ‘let's take a step back, let’s be a little bit more analytical about this, let’s work this through and figure out the right way to solve a problem permanently or improve the performance of something to meet expectations consistently.’” 

Listen to Those Who Experience the Problem 

How is it that participants learn such valuable skills so quickly in this accelerated program? “What this program aims to do is give people a very logical problem-solving approach,” Alan said. “It takes them step by step through an issue while allowing them, as they’re doing each step, to put forward arguments as to why they should spend the right amount of time and resources to get to the root cause of an issue.”

We asked Alan how participants do this during the Executive Education in Operational Excellence, and how this course helps participants thrive. “The entire program is run around a role-playing simulation,” he explained. “This is where we put the participants into a simulated office environment. We've deliberately made that environment partial chaos, where things are going wrong much of the time. One of the first things we do is put them into this environment, and make them feel uncomfortable enough to want to change it.”

Whether the participants are individuals or corporate teams, hold junior level positions or senior management positions, he notes that “in their organizations there will be people who are in these situations, who feel this way every day, and are waiting for somebody to fix it.” He goes on to explain that “having experienced these situations in the program, participants are able to go on and ask the right questions as to why these issues are happening in their own businesses.”

Use New Skills from Professional Management Training to Implement Permanent Solutions

Alan explained how this professional management training can provide tangible benefits for participants. “What we do is teach actionable techniques that help participants solve the problems they face in their own day to day jobs. In the role-play, they implement significant but relevant changes to the simulated business. So, if we start on a Monday, then by Friday they have completely improved the process. Having successfully transformed the business’ performance in the simulation, they gain the capability and the confidence to effect similarly remarkable improvements in their own businesses as soon as they return to their work environment.”

When asked about some of the specific skills participants can expect to acquire, Alan noted that instructors “explain how to ask the right kind of questions in order to get the level of detail needed to define what is wrong and then to fix it.” The program, he explained, is “all about this overall approach that includes both hard techniques and tools, and also this kind of softer side of questioning techniques, facilitation, presentation—all of which are prerequisites for any senior management role, as well as desirable attributes that anyone within a management team would want their employees to acquire.”

When asked about the most important aspect of the accelerated program, Alan pointed out that participants are learning by doing whilst having fun in the role-play at the same time. “Bottom line I think what it does is give people the confidence that they might not otherwise have,” he said, adding that “because if they don’t naturally have the personal confidence, they can use the skills and the data they have acquired to give them this confidence to emit a ‘can-do’ attitude and to make a significant difference back in the office.” 

Are you interested in advancing your career with business operations courses?

Contact WVPU for more information.