Advanced Management Program

Program Themes

• Challenging outdated assumptions — The Advanced Management Program encourages you to think systemically and metaphorically, calling into question traditional thought processes and exploring business challenges from new vantage points.
  
  
• Building on core functional competencies — You will be exposed to information and perspectives on the key business drivers of success: understanding financial levers, creating shareholder value, becoming market driven, assessing the impact of information and technology, and sustaining competitive advantage.
  
  
• Leading from the inside out — The learning community sessions that launch the Advanced Management Program segue into a self-assessment process — an exploration of what really defines you as a leader. In examining critical moments in your life and sharing these "crucible stories" with your group, you will uncover your greatest strengths and deepest values. This process culminates in articulating what drives you — your purpose as a leader. You will then create an action plan for leading from your "sweet spot," where your unique gifts are aligned with your purpose; as a result, you can become highly motivated from within to achieve long-term, sustainable results.
  
  
• Assessing your leadership advantage and planning your future – With an unmatched focus on you as an individual, the Advanced Management Program creates a risk-free environment to explore your own attitudes, strengths, and blind spots. Participants hear from successful CEOs who divulge the ingredients of their success, and reflection and peer consultation result in the development of a long-term life/career plan.
  
  
• Developing a global network of peers and experts – Advanced Management Program class sessions are designed to optimize the years of experience in the room. Knowledge exchanges are built into the curriculum, learning groups provide opportunities for exploring issues across business and cultural boundaries, and social activities promote a spirited camaraderie that leads to deep and lasting connections. Graduation from the program leads to an even larger and broader network as Advanced Management Program alumni join the ranks of over 84,000 Wharton alumni throughout the world.
  
  
• Strategic execution – Ultimately, what matters is what you do with the learning. This is why every Advanced Management Program session focuses on the relevance of theory to practice. Faculty relate their research in the field to the pressing business challenges you face, and the content includes processes that can be applied when you return to work, such as scenario planning, negotiation techniques, and discovery-driven planning. You are also encouraged to develop an implementation plan for your return. All of this is to ensure that your learning goals are translated into attainable results.
  

Points of Difference: Lasting Results

• The time is right: Five weeks long/six days a week (Monday through Saturday).
  
  
• Exclusive by design: Nominated participants only; average of 20 years of experience; in or being groomed for top leadership.
  
  
• Breadth and depth of faculty: The Wharton faculty includes over 200 of the best minds in the world in the disciplines of management, finance, marketing, and leadership. We supplement this tremendous talent pool with outside entrepreneurs, authors, and business coaches to add variety and address special topics. Advanced Management Program participants interact with the best of the best.
  
  
• Variety of teaching methods: In addition to faculty-led group discussions, case studies, and learning group exercises, the Wharton Advanced Management Program includes experiential learning and other instructional modalities to accommodate a variety of executive learning styles and to improve learning and retention.
  
  
• A global perspective: Participants and points of view from all over the world — 20% the Americas, 26% Europe, 35% Asia-Pacific, and 19% Mid-East and Africa — each with a unique and valuable perspective.
  
  
• In good company: Companies that have participated include Accenture, Bata Shoes, The Boeing Co., Bupa, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Fujitsu, Heineken, The Hershey Co., Hewlett-Packard, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Komatsu, Mitsui & Co., PETRONAS, Philips Electronics, Purolator, Saudi Aramco, Siam Cement, UBS, Unilever, and The Vanguard Group.
  
  
• The industry standard: The best companies and executives in the world — covering all industry sectors, including financial services, government, health care, manufacturing, media, not-for-profit, pharmaceuticals, technology, telecommunications, transportation, and energy and utilities.
  
  
• A vibrant place to think: Held at the state-of-the-art Steinberg Conference Center on the University of Pennsylvania's dynamic campus and surrounded by the culture, history, and vitality of Philadelphia — the birthplace of the United States.
  
  
• Executive accommodations: The Advanced Management Program fee includes a private guestroom and bath with a PC, exclusive dining, and all program materials.

Program Structure: Providing the Inside Track

Considering the pace of life and commerce today, five weeks might seem like a long time to be removed from day-to-day operations. However, given the comprehensive curriculum of Wharton's Advanced Management Program, we guarantee that the time will be an invaluable, reflective pause in the broad scope of your career. And while the venue and schedule are designed to facilitate a meaningful retreat from your normal environment, the program's tempo and rigor will keep you energized and engaged.

Week One: Becoming a Learning Community and Reframing the Competitive Landscape

The Advanced Management Program begins with the creation of an educational community among learning groups that will be sustained over the full five-week program. The groups then rally together to launch a program-long competition for the top business plan that develops a for-profit solution to a societal problem. In this first week of community building and shared purpose, participants uncover their leadership "sweet spot" by aligning purpose, motivation, and capability. The first week also explores systems thinking and considers how the parts of a system can be best understood in the context of the whole. You will also examine critical thinking as you explore meaning through inference and whether a conclusion is supported by logic and reason. The first-week sessions render and articulate the context in which we will examine the nature of competition, the global economy, the power of the individual leader, and the future role of business in society.

Sessions:

• Becoming an Educational Community
• Managing the Dynamics of a Hyper-Competitive Environment
• Authentic Leadership
• Critical Thinking and Decision Making
• Systems Thinking and Its Implications for Management
• Team Building: Crew and the Sport of Rowing in Racing Shells as a Metaphor for Team Building and Leadership

Week Two: The Business of Drawing Connections

The second week in the Advanced Management Program begins and ends with a series of sessions on creating shareholder value; sessions explore the relationship between investors and management, and between shareholder value and corporate strategy. Sessions emphasizing marketing cover the challenge of sustaining a competitive advantage, building customer relationships in the new economy, and being a market-driven company with a global demographic. Participants also consider their organization's future with multiple scenarios, look at how to create agility and flexibility to respond to multiple futures, and explore internal and external negotiation strategies.

Sessions:

• Scenario Planning
• Executive Negotiation Workshop
• Global Strategy: Global Risks and Global Policy
• Marketing Metrics and Branding
• Creating Shareholder Value
• Financial Statement Analysis
• Bridging the Metrics of Finance and Marketing

Week Three: Doing Good at Home and Abroad

We continue our examination of strategic financial levers by looking at the implications of and opportunities in foreign exchange rates. The utilization of human capital is also explored at different levels: recruiting and retaining qualified employees, the implications of shifting work force demographics, succession planning, and career path development. We end the week with group Societal Wealth Building Presentations. With the end of classes on Thursday, participants begin a long weekend away from Wharton to absorb the program's content, integrate it into their present lives, and refocus their goals for the Advanced Management Program's final two weeks.

Sessions:

• Foreign Exchange
• Talent on Demand
• Global Ethics and Regional Values
• Societal Wealth Building Presentations

Week Four: The Business of Leadership in Action

Starting with Peripheral Vision, you will discover new ways to look around the corner as you learn to detect the weak signals that may influence tomorrow's market landscape. You will also explore new market space opportunities found through your Blue Ocean Strategy. We will further advance your financial acumen through useful tools like real options analysis and valuation methodologies, and help you develop a shareholder value dashboard. Then, former CEOs share insights about their own stewardship roles and leadership characteristics needed for the next century. The week concludes with individual presentations to your learning groups of career plans for the next ten years; you will receive immediate peer feedback about your planned future.

Sessions:

• Peripheral Vision and Adaptive Capability
• Long-Term Stock and Bond Returns
• Corporate Governance
• Valuation
• Real Options
• Driving Superior Shareholder Value
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Fortune Article

Week Five: The Business of Shaping the Future

The fifth and final week of the Wharton Advanced Management Program starts with an examination of execution, know-how, and the technological trends shaping tomorrow's management and competitive landscape. Finally, we pursue how the convergence of bio-technology and energy distribution will affect the future of business, globalization, and society. Through presentations by each learning group, participants share perspectives on their roles as leaders, as well as the new ideas, discoveries, and understanding they'll carry with them to their professional and personal lives. After taking time to recognize and honor the value of the learning groups and community, the Advanced Management Program concludes with a graduation ceremony and celebration.

Sessions:

• The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World
• Learning Exchange
• Execution and Know-How
• Technology and Trends
• The Third Industrial Revolution
• Looking Back and Moving Ahead

The Partners' Program – After five weeks away from a spouse or partner in such an intensive and focused program, there's much to share. During the last two days of the final week, spouses, partners, or other guests are invited to take part in selected Advanced Management Program sessions and social activities. This shared frame of reference — and experience — greatly enhances participants' reentry into home and work environments.

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Alumni Status – Completion of the Wharton Advanced Management Program grants alumni status in one of the world's largest business school's alumni network. With more than 84,000 members living and working in more than 130 countries — supported by 77 U.S. and international clubs and regional representatives — the Wharton alumni network enables meaningful connection and helps you stay informed through annual forums around the world. In addition to a lifelong Wharton e-mail address, Advanced Management Program graduates receive a full complement of print and online communications.

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You've got boundless potential for success. And we've got the senior management development program to help you realize it. Make Wharton's Advanced Management Program part of your leadership strategy. Make it your next important decision.

To apply to the Wharton Advanced Management Program:

• You must be nominated by the chief executive officer, division president, or senior corporate human resources officer. All nominators must provide a candid evaluation of the candidate's capabilities, professional potential, and planned career track.
  
  
• All candidates must complete the application themselves, and convey a genuine understanding of their developmental needs and the ways in which the program meets those needs.
  
  
• ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY REQUIRED: All candidates for the AMP must have English language fluency to complete reading assignments and to actively engage in group discussions and activities. If you have less than one year's experience working in an English-speaking environment, please contact us immediately and we will schedule an appointment for you to speak with one of our language specialists about our business English Language Programs. (The Admissions Committee may also require an interview.)
  
  

To secure registration, a $10,000 non-refundable deposit is due within two weeks of acceptance to this management development program. The balance of tuition is due 60 days before the start of classes. Cancellations made less than 45 days before the start date risk forfeiture of the full tuition.

Transformation and growth are rarely easy. But you wouldn't be where you are if you were familiar with the easy route. We look forward to sharing the excitement and sense of accomplishment that comes from challenging yourself to go somewhere you've never been and coming out exactly where you want to be: on top.

For more information about the Wharton Advanced Management Program, please contact:

Antoinette Simon
Director, Customer Care
+1.215.898.7988
simonan@wharton.upenn.edu

International travelers: Please review travel advisory information to avoid delays.

The benefits of the Wharton Advanced Management Program will continue to add value throughout your professional and personal life. Past participants in the Wharton AMP continually tell us about the distinct and unique skills, discoveries, and knowledge that have influenced their lives since they took part in the program. They tell us it is an experience without equal, and one that continues to affect them deeply, with a multitude of benefits. You will:

• Challenge outdated assumptions and explore business challenges from new vantage points.
• Build on core functional competencies: understanding financial levers, creating shareholder value, becoming market driven, assessing the impact of information and technology, and sustaining competitive advantage.
• Shift to new leadership paradigms and behaviors.
• Understand and contribute to a discussion of emerging business issues in key parts of the world.
• Assess your leadership advantage and plan your future in a risk-free environment.
• Develop a global network of peers and experts and join the ranks of more than 84,000 Wharton alumni throughout the world.
• Develop an implementation plan for your return.

Faculty: A Concentration of Knowledge

Responses among participants in the Authentic Leadership sessions in AMP have been outstanding. The sessions have received some of the highest AMP program scores in participant evaluations. In the following testimonials, participants relate how the sessions have had a transformative effect not only upon their leadership development, but in aspects of their personal life as well.

"AMP 56 was one of the most profound experiences of my life. The experience was analogous with peeling away the layers of an onion. This forced deep introspection (something that I hadn't done for a very long time) which created an unbelievable level of renewed self awareness. For me the programme design helped surface the 'real me.' Whilst these onion layers were being peeled away I realized how outdated many of the tools that I used in business had become. Some needed replacing and others needed sharpening. Most importantly, in this exposed state, we developed meaningful friendships and an extended community that nurtured each of us, helping us rebuild ourselves. I left a far more complete and better human being than when I arrived."
—Doug Leather, REAP Consulting Ltd.

"My main experience has been as a commercial director for Heineken in the Congo for the last four years. The Congo is an extreme business environment. On the one side, you have to hit your numbers, you have to make your plans, you have to brief your agencies — you're just behaving as if you are running any other big fast-moving consumer operation. But you're in a bizarre business environment. The Congo — the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is rock-bottom from any perspective. If you take the United Nations Human Development Index, Congo is in the bottom five for poverty, and the top five for corruption. It is the worst place in the world to do business according to the IFC/World Bank. And being relatively young to the position in such an environment has been an incredible stretch for me. It has been an incredible learning and development experience whereby I learned more than how to drive business.

The most striking moments have been where I have had to make decisions that went further than business. These were literally about life and death. I've been in a situation where some people tried to hijack or arrest me, probably for ransom, and where I had to fight to get free, physically breaking loose to get away. Besides, I have been responsible for our people and brewery at a moment of great instability, when serious fighting erupted in the center of Kinshasa very close to the brewery. At such moments you are called upon to make very tough choices and decisions that normally would not be within the scope of a manager of a FMCG firm.

Through this Authentic Leadership (AL) experience, I realized that what I've been doing in the Congo is my real purpose — to lead with wisdom. That's something I realized thanks to the AL sessions. Somewhere deep down, you know your purpose. You feel it. But you're not able to articulate it. In these sessions, in a surprisingly short timeframe — within two days, with complete strangers, you are able to articulate your purpose. So, it has been a fantastic experience. And it's already helped me during the Advanced Management Program, and I'm sure it's going to help me by making me much more articulate and conscious about my purpose. It will help me in making the choices I make while in my current job, and in making choices about what kind of position I will strive for in the future and how I will perform in that new position."
—Dolf van den Brink, Bralima S.A.R.L. /Heineken N.V.

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"My experience at the AMP program has been the best educational experience I have ever had. I would never have imagined the impact that Wharton has made in my life, company, and within the security industry. In these difficult economic times, my company business has been booming with new growth and I have no problems getting credit. I really believe that all of this has been because of Wharton. I put Wharton learning into action with my company, and that has been the key for me."
—Kent Moyer, CEO/President, The World Protection Group, Inc.

"Without doubt, the Advanced Management Program was the most stimulating educational experience I have had. It made me think deeply about the impact of global competition on my industry and how the lessons from other industries can be applied. The human dimension was particularly valuable and helped me reflect on my role and my future career. The whole experience was first-rate."
—Valerie Gooding, BUPA

"When I joined Unilever Turkey, I was the only foreigner on the board. Wharton's Advanced Management Program focused on how to manage a transnational organization in a fast-moving environment. I did things I probably wouldn't have done before, like taking the high ground and staying there as long as possible. From the program, I have a personal toolkit that I refer to quite often."
—Philippe Barthen, Unilever