Schedule-At-A-Glance

The following schedule is for the 2027 Executive Management Institute course. 

Time Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
  25-Apr 26-Apr 27-Apr 28-Apr 29-April 30-April
7:00 - 8:00 a.m. Welcome to the 2027 Executive Management Institute course! Breakfast –
Hilton Orrington Shuttles		 Breakfast –
Hilton Orrington		 Breakfast –
Hilton Orrington		 Breakfast –
Hilton Orrington		 Breakfast –
Hilton Orrington
8:00 - 8:30 a.m. Welcome & Program  Kick-Off  Shuttles: 7:40, 8:10 a.m. Shuttles: 7:40, 8:10 a.m. Shuttles: 7:40, 8:10 a.m. Shuttles: 7:20, 7:40, 8:10 a.m.
8:30 - 10:00 a.m. Values Based Leadership

Kraemer		 Design Thinking and Human Centered Innovation

Schonthal		 Mergers and Acquisistions: A Look Behind the Curtain

Turmell		 Risk Management

Peterson		 Getting Good at Getting Great: Deliberate Practice and Feedback

Sykes
10:00 - 10:15 a.m. Break Break Break Break Break
10:15 - 11:45 a.m. Values Based Leadership

Kraemer		 Design Thinking and Human Centered Innovation

Schonthal		 Mergers and Acquisistions: A Look Behind the Curtain

Turmell		 Risk Management

Peterson		 Getting Good at Getting Great: Deliberate Practice and Feedback

Sykes
11:45 - 1:00 p.m. Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. Gaining Customer Insights

Sawhney		 Cultivating a High-Performance, High-Engagement Culture

Harburg		 Leadership in 6G: Leveraging Generational Difference in the Workplace

Pearce		 Developing and Managing Coalitions for Success

Kteily		 Congratulations!

Thank you for completing the Kellogg and NAWLA 2027 Executive Management Institute!
2:30 - 2:45 p.m. Break Break Break Break
2:45 - 4:15 p.m. Understanding Customer Jobs to be Done

Sawhney		 Cultivating a High-Performance, High-Engagement Culture

Harburg		 Leadership in 6G: Leveraging Generational Difference in the Workplace

Pearce		 Developing and Managing Coalitions for Success


Kteily
4:15 - 4:45 p.m. Daily Reflection, Application and Evaluation Daily Reflection, Application and Evaluation Daily Reflection, Application and Evaluation Daily Reflection, Application and Evaluation
4:45 - 5:15 p.m. Shuttles: 4:45, 5:00, 5:15 p.m. Shuttles: 4:45, 5:00, 5:15 p.m. Shuttles: 4:45, 5:00, 5:15 p.m. Shuttles: 4:45, 5:00, 5:15 p.m.
5:15 - 6:30 p.m. Free Time Free Time Shuttle: 5:30 p.m. to downtown Chicago Free Time
6:30 - 7:00 p.m. Welcome Reception
Hilton Orrington		 Social Time and Dinner
Downtown Evanston		 Social Time
Hilton Orrington		 Social Time and Dinner
Flight Club
Downtown Chicago		 Social Time and Celebration Dinner
Downtown Evanston
7:00 - 8:00 p.m. Dinner
Hilton Orrington		 Dinner
Hilton Orrington
8:00 - 10:00 p.m. Late Lounge
Hilton Orrington
(optional)		 Late Lounge
Hilton Orrington
(optional)		 Late Lounge
Hilton Orrington
(optional)		 Late Lounge
Hilton Orrington
(optional)

Late Lounge
Hilton Orrington
(optional)

Program Session Descriptions

Values Based Leadership

Instructor:  Harry Kraemer

Sometimes "doing the right thing" while also delivering outstanding and lasting results is difficult for leaders to achieve. Values-based leaders are needed more than ever in today’s economic and political environment. This dynamic session addresses the four principles of values-based leadership, helping participants understand the importance of self-reflection, balance, true self-confidence and genuine humility in the actions and decisions they make as leaders of their organizations.

Gaining Customer Insights and Understanding Customer Jobs to be Done

Instructor:  Mohan Sawhney

Part 1: Gaining Customer Insights 

We define a customer insight and look at where insights come from: customer frustrations, industry orthodoxies, extreme users, anomalies and analogies from other industries. We examine why customers often cannot or will not describe their real needs, and why what they say differs from what they need. We then review a set of tools for finding insights: observing customers in their own settings, customer visits, product usage data, customer advisory boards, ideas collected from customers and generative AI. Cases from Whirlpool, Tesla and Salesforce show these tools in practice.
 

Part 2: Understanding Customer Jobs to be Done

We introduce the Jobs to be Done framework: customers "hire" a product or service to get a job done. We break a job into its parts: the customer and the situation, the functional, emotional and social needs, the barriers and the workarounds customers use today. Participants learn to write clear job statements, to separate the person who uses a solution from the person who buys it and to rank jobs by importance and by how well current solutions meet them. Cases from QuickBooks, Duolingo and Hilti show how a clear view of the customer's job leads to new offerings and business models.

Design Thinking and Human Centered Innovation

Instructor: David Schonthal

Business is still, at its core, a social enterprise—and understanding the social, emotional and functional needs of real people is what separates lasting innovation from fleeting novelty. In this interactive session, Kellogg School of Management Professor David Schonthal explores the fundamentals of Human-Centered Innovation and how it applies to everything from products and services to business models. As AI reshapes how things get built and decisions get made, the ability to see the world through a human lens becomes a sharper competitive advantage, not a softer one. Technology can generate options at scale, but it can’t tell you which ones people actually want. The session examines how these principles play out across industries, in small companies and large enterprises alike. No background in design, engineering or AI is required to benefit—just a bit of curiosity and a willingness to view the world through a more human-centered lens.

Cultivating a High-Performance, High-Engagement Culture

Instructor:  Fred Harburg

This executive session helps leaders cultivate a high-performance, high-engagement culture by focusing on the design choices that shape how work, decisions and learning happen every day. Rather than treating culture as values or intent, participants examine how purpose, roles, decision flow, information sharing, expertise integration and learning practices either reinforce or erode engagement and performance. Using a structured diagnostic and practical design framework, leaders identify the primary cultural constraint limiting their team’s effectiveness and redesign it intentionally. The session adapts seamlessly for intact senior leadership teams aligning around shared cultural shifts, or for mixed-organization cohorts applying the same principles to their own contexts while benchmarking patterns across teams. Emphasis is placed on immediate application and sustained follow-through.

Mergers and Acquisitions: A Look Behind the Curtain

Instructor:  Tom Turmell

Mergers and acquisitions are an active, dynamic part of the global economy, and an important part of business value creation. The private equity industry represents a significant portion of M&A volume and touches almost every industry, geography and market, affecting every business landscape within which it competes. How should companies think about mergers and acquisitions and private equity? What is the difference between a strategic and a financial buyer? Can they be the same? Is private equity a force for good—or for bad? Do M&A and private equity create jobs and provide an economic growth engine, or do they destroy quality businesses, industries, and the markets in which they compete? This conversation provides a behind-the-scenes view of mergers and acquisitions and the private equity industry, exploring private equity asset classes, desired M&A strategies and outcomes, how strategic buyers and private equity affect markets, how private equity can be an effective tool for entrepreneurs seeking to grow their companies, and how strategic and private equity buyers can be an attractive exit strategy for business owners who have built sustainable enterprises.

Leadership in 6G: Leveraging Generational Differences in the Workplace

Instructor:  Nicholas Pearce

Leadership involves understanding the needs, styles and motivations of different groups in the workforce and what it means for the future. This workshop engages participants in peer-to-peer dialogue regarding their perspectives on generational differences and equips leaders with interpersonal and enterprise-level strategies for more effectively attracting, retaining and leveraging people across generational divides to create more inclusive and sustainable organizations.

Risk Management

Instructor:  Mitchell Petersen

Risk is part of every investment decision made by any firm. This session begins by examining how markets and investors perceive risk, which provides a foundation for a broader discussion of risk management. Participants then consider why and when risk management adds value, examining the objective of risk management first and how a firm estimates or measures its risk exposure second. Understanding the objective and where the firm currently stands makes it easier to determine what the firm should do to modify its risk exposure.

Developing and Managing Coalitions for Success

Instructor:  Nour Kteily

Getting things done often requires working with others, no easy feat when dealing with a variety of different stakeholders, each with their own set of distinct interests. In this session, participants take part in an interactive multi-round, multi-party simulation that highlights the importance of coalition building and political nimbleness for success. The results of the simulation serve as a guide for discussing frameworks and effective strategies for building and managing coalitions at work.

Getting Good at Getting Great: Deliberate Practice and Feedback

Instructor:  Andrew Sykes

Most people gain experience on autopilot. In contrast, top performers achieve excellence through deliberate practice paired with the right type of immediate performance feedback from a coach who has a model of excellence. This combination, along with a growth-oriented beginner’s mindset, is the key to getting good at getting great at anything. In this session, participants use the 2x2 Feedback Model to grow capability through immediate incremental improvement and exponential growth over time.