Horses as Courses

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Probably not, says Richard Boyatzis, a professor of psychology and organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. "Most of the time, the purchase decision for these services is driven by a confused set of objectives or a decision to just do something," he says, "because the business climate is lousy or something has to be done about the company's internal culture or its markets. That leads to frenzied choices." The fruits of longer programs that set specific goals stand a much better chance of sticking with a participant, Boyatzis argues. That doesn't come cheap though. Conversant's course, featuring three weeklong sessions over eight months, costs $15,500 a head, pretty much the industry standard.

The American Management Association, a nonprofit group in New York City that sponsors management-training courses of varying lengths, says business is up. And William Silver, an associate dean of the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business, says more companies are asking him to set up customized training programs for specific issues.

Silver, who puts together Pacific Ocean sailing expeditions for high-level executives, says long-form training has changed "as the smarter companies realize there's no quick fix in developing leaders. If you want to change behavior, it has to be practiced over and over again. Then take it back to the workplace, and after that, go back for even more training."

Conversant asks each trainee to apply what she or he has learned to a current in-house project, with the goal of generating at least 10 times the return on the money the company is spending on the effort.

Difficult to accomplish? Not really, says Roger Bhalla, the director of HP's Worldwide Notebook Supply Chain Strategy and a Conversant graduate. A 40-person project to overhaul factories in six countries generated a 100-fold return on investment, he reports. Before he attended the horse program, though, "it was highly probable that the project would have stalled, based on disagreements in the team," he recalls.

At week's end, the Conversant crew knows it won't be pushing several thousand head of balky, stinky steers up the Chisholm Trail anytime soon. But the trainees have come far enough to achieve a sense of accomplishment, as well as a confidence they hope will stick even when they're buried in paperwork and Ferguson and her colleagues in accounting are screaming for new computers. "I went into the program with some trepidation," allows Kelcie Anderson, 36, a project manager with Tektronix in Beaverton, Ore., who had never been on a horse before her stay at the Home Ranch. "I was never afraid of my horse, but I didn't know how well I was going to do." After a disappointing start, Anderson learned how to corral her fears, not to mention a wayward steer. Now she'll see if she's better at keeping the strays on the job in line.