Doing It Your Way: Creating a Personalized Strategy and Leadership Program
When
Dan Petronella, vice president and treasurer for Abercrombie & Fitch,
recently negotiated a lease for the company's first Asian store
in the Ginza section of Tokyo, he drew upon his experience at Wharton's Executive
Development Program (EDP).
The international scope of participants in the program gave Petronella an invaluable exposure to diverse cultures. "The differences in how Asian cultures do business required a steep learning curve on my part," he says. "Having interactions with several EDP classmates from that part of the world during the program provided me with a good cultural base. I am definitely still learning."
The EDP session on negotiations with Wharton Professor Richard Shell helped to prepare Petronella to negotiate for his company's first Asian store. "Richard Shell's negotiations class has had immediate value," he says. "In my job, I negotiate a number of large external agreements for the company. That class alone has already provided the company with millions of dollars of additional value."
A Customized Development Program in Strategy
The February 2007 EDP was the capstone of a personalized senior management program at Wharton that Petronella started in 1999, for which he earned a Certificate of Professional Development (CPD), awarded for completing four Wharton programs. He first came to Wharton in March of that year when he was heading the expansion of the Walt Disney Travel Company into the U.K. Having earned his MBA five years earlier, Petronella wanted to keep on learning, particularly as his responsibility for strategy continued to expand. "The world had changed a bit in the five years since I graduated with my MBA. I realized it would add significant value if I could keep in touch with the classroom and network with colleagues internationally."
To ready himself for developing strategies and business plans for the new initiative at Disney, Petronella enrolled in Wharton's Strategic Thinking and Management for Competitive Advantage, with Professor Harbir Singh. "When I went back to the office, I could work more effectively with senior leadership and concisely synthesize good strategic recommendations," he says.
In December of that same year, shortly after assuming a new position as senior finance manager for Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Petronella returned to Wharton for a second strategy program on scenario planning. In his new role, he led the financial process for the global marketing and sales organization, with 1,100 employees and responsibility for $2 billion in net profit for Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Disney Cruise Line.
The Wharton program, led by Paul Schoemaker, Wharton adjunct professor of management, changed the way they approached strategic planning at Disney. "It opened my eyes to how an organization can think about strategy," he comments. "It helped us to think about a global distribution strategy for parks and resorts. And it gave me a great tool that I could bring back to the company."
The impact of the Wharton program was a 25- to 50-percent reduction in the time Disney spent planning, while increasing the organization's effectiveness. "We moved from a purely tactical exercise of creating the annual operating plan and budget to focusing on where we wanted the business to go," he says. "Scenario planning provided us with a framework to see the threats and opportunities in the environment. We could focus on strategy. Any budget exercise is a rollup of numbers – but this time the numbers had more significance behind them."
After joining Abercrombie & Fitch in 2004, Petronella returned to Wharton in September 2005 for Implementing Strategy: Leading Effective Execution with Associate Professor Larry Hrebiniak. "The class framed well the challenges of implementation," he remarks. "The best plan on paper is not worth much if you can't implement it. The program hammered home that strategy development and implementation shouldn't be separate. It is not people sitting in an ivory tower sending down a parchment to the masses who have to implement it. Senior leaders have to take an integrated approach to developing strategy and implementation."
Accessibility and Dialogue
Throughout his Wharton programs, Petronella has been impressed with the level of accessibility and dialogue with faculty members. "What stands out for me is the attention that the faculty pays to being open and fostering a dialogue in the classroom, which isn't always the case. When you are engaged in a dialogue with faculty who have very meaningful real-world experience, that is a tremendous benefit."
Rather than a series of separate programs, Wharton allowed him to create a program that was tailored to his own evolving needs. "One of the reasons I picked Wharton was the depth and quality of its open enrollment curriculum," he says. "I didn't want a series of one-off classroom experiences. I wanted to drive toward something bigger that would push me and help me develop professionally."
