Business college launches accounting certificate program

In response to increasing demand for financial professionals, Cornell has developed an online certificate program in accounting and auditing.

The program is relevant for people seeking a career in corporate finance, as well as for pre-MBA students looking to obtain a core foundation in accounting.

Available online through eCornell, the program’s four courses include essential principles and best practices of accounting, including how to interpret and report financial statements and accounts, understand the conceptual framework and rules, and identify potential gaps in financial reporting.

“This course was designed to develop the critical skills for those exploring a career in accounting or navigating the financial world, and enable them with the fundamental knowledge necessary to succeed,” said Rob Bloomfield, faculty program author and professor of accounting in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Participants will benefit from expert instruction and established best practices, and will learn to confidently construct and interpret accounts of revenue, accounts receivable, inventory, long-term assets and debt, and equity.

Whether looking to enter the financial world as an accountant, investor, entrepreneur or student, this program will equip participants with the indispensable skills and understanding to enrich their journey.

  • Courses for the certificate program include:
  • Foundations of Financial Statements
  • Accruals and Cash Flows
  • Sales Accounting
  • Investments, Capital and Financial Forecasting

After completion of the four courses, participants will receive an accounting certificate. Go to the eCornell website to learn more about this program.

Bailey Karfelt

Everyone’s in the hospitality business, every day

In today’s competitive market, the customer experience is everything — and not just in the hospitality industry. From the very first impression until the customer walks out the door, there are countless opportunities for making their experience memorable.  As part of eCornell’s Keynote webcast series, customer service expert Elizabeth Martyn from Cornell Hotel School joined eCornell’s Chris Wofford for an interactive discussion on understanding the customer mindset, how to exceed expectations — and even when offering guests a warm cookie might backfire.

What follows is an abridged version of that conversation. Watch the full keynote here.

Martyn: I feel like I always have to tell people that I’ve never actually worked in a hotel, which throws people off a little bit when we start talking about hospitality. But I take a broader view and believe that hospitality is really everywhere. If you have clients, or customers, or patients, or anyone who buys anything from you, you’re really in the business of providing a service and therefore you’re in the business of hospitality.

Wofford: The two of us were talking a little bit about the modern tech-savvy consumer and their expectations.

Martyn: I think whenever I start to talk about these things, I ask people to think about themselves. Because I know I’m one of these people. I’ve got my phone attached, I’ve got my computer ready. And whether you’ve thought about it or not, we’re all becoming really highly trained by our devices and by technology to have information at our fingertips. You expect that you’re going to be able to get everything done on your phone. Now, not everyone prefers to do it on their phone, don’t get me wrong. Some people are more traditional. They want that phone call or they want to do it on their computer.

But that’s where we’re moving to, because we’ve been trained that we’re always going to get exactly what we want, and there’s so much on our phones that we can use to make it exactly how we want it. But it’s not like we’re all issued the same phone with the same apps or the same email provider. Everybody can pick and choose what’s going to work for them and to create a digital experience that reflects who they are as a person. But now that we’re so used to having this thing that’s like attached to our bodies all day, every day, these ideas, preferences and expectations start to come out of the digital experience and into everything else that we participate in.

The second that your organization or your business doesn’t have a digital experience that allows people to get at those commonly asked questions with key information, or your digital information is out of date, that starts creating some conflict really quickly because now people feel disappointed. Because if other companies can do it, why can’t yours?

Wofford: As service providers, the next question that comes up is: well, what can we do about that? How do we manage these expectations?

Martyn: Start by paying attention to the questions people are asking. If you’re hearing the same question over and over, you should be thinking, “Whoa, this is a trend. We have an opportunity here.”

Wofford: If something comes up time and time again, it should really be searchable information on your website, right?

Martyn: Exactly. You should be thinking about how to make it more present on our homepage, whether that’s in the FAQs or the About section. You want to have that information available. I think a lot of service organizations tend to make the mistake of thinking that high-quality service is high-touch service. The second that you make the mistake of thinking that the only way to provide high-quality service is to force me to interact with someone on your team, you’re missing the mark because that might not be my preference.

You want to offer a choice by putting things online for the people who are going to go to your website and navigate there. It should also be easy to get ahold of someone who’s going to talk to me and engage with me maybe over the phone or in person, if that’s my preference. But you don’t want to choose for your consumers what’s going to be best for them. No one likes being told what they like.

Wofford: I really relate to that. Sometimes when you’re out to dinner and the server has come to you twenty times unnecessarily, it gets to be a little bit much. I understand that it comes from a genuine place of wanting to help, but it can be a little much. Now, let’s take on the idea of establishing operational systems. When you come to an organization and start working with a hospitality group, how do you get everybody up to speed and on the same page?

Martyn: You cannot climb the mountain the first time you ever go on a hike. It’s really important to identify your core problems and tackle those first. What can you put in place right away that will impact at least some guests?

Oftentimes, it’s an issue of bandwidth. You can’t see really great solutions if you’re behind the curve all the time. So start with a triage approach and identify the fast and easy things that will impact some folks and give you a little more space to start to then tackle the next, maybe more sophisticated, version of this solution. Don’t feel like you have to solve everything perfectly right away.

Wofford: What are the greatest opportunities that you can see with technology being able to help?

Martyn: I think it’s so easy to think that technology is going to solve it. That’s really not the right viewpoint. The viewpoint should be about how it supports us and supports anyone who’s interacting with our clients, our customers or our guests.
We talked about getting information up on your website, making your FAQs more available. What are those common questions that you’re hearing several times a day on the phone or over email? You need to get that information more quickly into the hands of your consumer so they can find it and move on with their day. That way, your frontline teams have more time and space to provide really meaningful interactions to the guests who really need it rather than anxiously trying to rush them through the conversation because there are ten people in line or the email inbox is filling up. You want your workers to feel like it’s acceptable and appropriate to take more time to work through those more complicated solutions. So it’s not only solving problems, but also making those investments to grow the relationship between your organization and your consumers.

Wofford: How do you see big data and analytics helping face-to-face interactions?

Martyn: You have to understand who the person is you are interacting with. Can you get a jump on some of that through the use of profile information? Does this person have a family? Are they a single business person? Where are they based? The faster I can get at that, the more sophisticated my engagement with them is going to be.

But there’s one thing I want to caution everyone against – and I feel very strongly about this – and that is that I’m a different person every time I interact with your brand. I am not the same person from my first purchase to my last. Travel’s a really great way to illustrate this. I’m a very different person with different needs and different expectations when I’m traveling alone for business than when I’m traveling with my husband for a getaway. It’s still me, so my profile’s going to say all the same things, but what I’m looking to get out of the service interaction really shifts depending on the context of my trip.

Wofford: What’s the takeaway on that?

Martyn: I think that’s one of the values of human interaction. The thing that’s emerging out of all the technology advancements is that there is still a very, very important place in the world for the human-to-human component of service delivery. And that’s true regardless of what industry you’re in. So, how do you take out all the perfunctory pieces?

Checking in or checking out of a hotel is a classic example. The process can be very perfunctory, focused only on the room number, the key, getting the customer to sign the waiver. But what if that interaction could be about something else entirely, and the room key and the waiver signature and the credit card are more like afterthoughts? What would be most helpful for the guest to have a wonderful stay? If there’s one thing the property could do for them over the next two days, what would it be? In my case, when I’m a business traveler, I might say that it’s providing bottled water. When I’m with my husband, I might say it’s letting us decide when housekeeping should come.

Wofford: Let’s say you’ve inherited staff who have worked for twenty plus years under one brand and they now find it difficult to follow a new training plan under a rebranded hotel. What do you do?

Martyn: Change is so hard for everyone. I think with all things, everybody wants to be a little bit in control. As an employee that means they want to know what their job is, how to do it well and how to do it in a way that is well respected. What’s really hard about what you’re going through is you have new expectations that maybe haven’t been completely explained to your team. And you’re probably sitting there going, “But I’ve said it ten times.” But that doesn’t mean that they’ve understood it or that they’ve bought in.

Companies have things like mission, vision, and values that help explain why they are doing the things that they are. In your re-flag situation, the answer can’t just be because the new brand says: “This is what we do.” If that’s the answer, or if that’s how it’s presented, there’s no incentive for employees to make an emotional investment into that adjustment.

Hypothetically, let’s say you re-flagged because the hotel wasn’t performing financially under the old brand. It’s important to explain that you were at risk of closing and ended up moving brands to better align with where you’re located, what your amenities are or whatever, so that you can keep the hotel financially viable and keep everyone employed. That’s a level of trust and transparency that also helps people understand why are they being subjected to this change. But how do you gain an emotional buy-in? And how do you work toward understanding what’s important to people in terms of what they’re really looking to get out of their job? Those are really two critical components in driving any change.

Wofford: What do you feel is more important, recruiting new employees or continuing to train existing ones?

Martyn: People say that you can’t train attitude. I actually don’t believe that. I believe training is incredibly valuable. I think that so often folks get written off as not caring or having a bad attitude, but I feel like you cannot say that that’s the case if you haven’t talked to them about the issue. I like to say “No one’s trying to be the worst.” It’s a bit sarcastic, but it means that until you feel 100 percent confident that you’ve sat this person down and explained what they’re doing, how it impacts other people, or how it’s being perceived, you can’t know that they are aware the problem exists. Until you’ve told them what they’re doing is wrong, you can’t assume that they know it.

My experience with a lot of training is that there are some people who are terrific with guests. I’m sure you have your rock stars and your people are amazing and everyone feels the love when they work with them. But if you ask them, “What did you do with Mr and Mrs So-and-So to make them so happy?” They’re going to give you a really bland answer because they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just being themselves and fortunately for them it is perceived really well by the people to whom they’re providing service. But for people who don’t have that innate ability and want to do their job well, someone has to tell them. And some of the things that I think often go untrained are the things that don’t fall into the book of standards.

I’m sure at your property you have standards or guidelines about how you do certain things, what the rules are, how often you reach out to guests, how you communicate with them, or how many rings are allowed before you pick up the phone. All of that stuff oftentimes is documented. That’s like the ‘what’, the technical aspects of delivering your service. But the part that’s a lot harder is the ‘how’, which is actually what service excellence training is all about.

Wofford: What are your thoughts on maintaining an appropriate level of guest service when much of your staff is provided by third-party employment agencies? There are conflicting loyalties in terms of employment and focus.

Martyn: A lot of people have this, and if you have any kind of third-party contracts, or you have a management group interacting with an ownership group, it can be very, very complicated. But it goes back to what we were talking about before: getting people to understand the ‘why’.

Now, there could be a situation in which you are giving one set of directions and then the other manager that the employees technically report to is directly contradicting you, and that’s tricky. But that’s a technical piece that you have to work out between the two managers to make sure that the messaging is really consistent.

What is helpful is to make it less subjective and not about one person’s opinion versus another’s, because there’s not one person on this planet who isn’t going to say that their opinion is better. That’s just human nature. So you need to make it more objective by creating a rather vanilla, opinion-free approach to the decision-making process.

So with your different stakeholder groups, I would encourage you to go back and figure out those things that everyone is in alignment on. Maybe it’s financial incentives, maybe it is about guest experience. Once you figure out what the common point of departure is, you start to look at every situation and scenario through that common lens.

Wofford: How do you communicate metrics to frontline staff and turn it into something actionable?

Martyn: First off, hopefully everyone out there is measuring their guest experience. If you’re not, make sure you’re collecting those post-experience surveys. Consumers around the world are well trained, so there are pretty reasonably high response rates. So if you’re not yet doing a post experience survey, that’s a huge opportunity for you.

So, how do you take that information and make it into something real? Something I’ve seen done really effectively is figuring out a way to provide accolades to the people who are your stars. You might have to write questions into your survey like, “Was there any member of our staff who was particularly helpful to you?” Once you start getting that information, make a point of celebrating that Anna got three comments this last month or Sean was mentioned five times. So first off, make it personal. The scores themselves are hard to connect with and quite frankly, they’re really arbitrary benchmarks. We can’t even be sure they’re interpreting our questions correctly. But if you start to look at your qualitative data, your open-ended questions, then you have this opportunity to really raise up employees that are doing well.

Wofford: Do you have an example of a recent service interaction that really blew you away, that we could sort of look to as an example to follow?

Martyn: You know, I really see a lot of examples of great customer service, but for me I’m not really looking for some sort of special gesture. I don’t want anything comped. I don’t want a complimentary dessert. I really don’t want any of those things because so often they are a sign that the basics were not well executed. The best experience for me is when everything just happens. I don’t need anything special. I just want to pay for the thing or service that I wanted, and it all just happens smoothly so that I can pay my bill and leave. That is truly the best experience. As soon as you get into talking about ‘surprise and delight’, which is a common industry term, or these ‘above and beyond’ gestures, they actually don’t hold a lot of value for me.

So often, these gestures are nice and thoughtful, but they’re not really what I want. As an example, let’s say I’m unexpectedly delivered a cheese tray. Well, okay, that’s nice, but I’m not hungry now and I’m checking out at six am tomorrow, so I’m not going to eat it. I think it’s so hard to get gestures right in a way that’s actually very meaningful and relevant to the individual because what they need at any given time is constantly shifting. For me, I’d really rather have that energy and time invested in just doing what I originally asked for extremely well.

Wofford: Do you have any thoughts and strategies on first impressions?

Martyn: Picture this. You’ve just driven eight hours with your children and they were crying for the last hour of the journey. How do you feel when you get to that hotel? Do you feel great? No, you feel exhausted and at the end of your rope. The same could be said after a day of air travel or even a long day of work. So you’ve got a guest who is coming into what’s supposed to be this restful thing or happy thing. But so often we as guests are carrying our own baggage, or maybe we really need to use the restroom because we haven’t stopped for hours. Whatever. Then you arrive and you’re given the check-in information, the Wi-Fi password, and all that. So the guest is already feeling tired and overwhelmed and the warm cookie just isn’t going to be as effective as it would be when the guest is relaxed, isn’t lugging around their 50-pound bags and so on. Then all of a sudden the cookie would create a much larger impression because the guest has more bandwidth to absorb it.

So I would say that it’s important to really think about those first impressions. There is so much already going on during that arrival experience, so how can you take the non-necessary things out of the experience so it feels less overwhelming?

Wofford: Has your research revealed any meaningful generational differences when it comes to employees delivering amazing guest experiences?

Martyn: The research I’ve done hasn’t focused on that directly, but I can offer some of my impressions. I think generationally, what is different, goes back to the beginning of our conversation, when we talked about identifying ‘the why’. Why should I care? What’s in it for me? That’s what’s really different generationally.

Your oldest group and cohort in the workforce might not be super comfortable with tech but they have a ton of experience. They used to think customer service just meant smiling, and now you’re trying to tell them it’s all these other more sophisticated things. You have to be able to really help them understand how the changes that you’re recommending are actually going to impact the guests. Oftentimes that group in particular is so emotionally invested in the guests. They just want them to have the best time. They are so committed to that, so you have to be able to connect the dots for why that’s important.

The younger employees are going to find the tech part so easy. They’re really flexible and nimble and they want to learn. They have a different ‘what’s in it for me’ reason to adjust what they’ve already been told. On the other hand, the younger employees might need help making better connections with the guest base, who might not be just like them. Trying to better communicate with 40, 50 or 60-year-olds can be a struggle because those people aren’t like them. So although I don’t have formal research on this, what I would recommend is kind of stepping back and thinking about the different groups in your workforce and what’s important to them in terms of feeling satisfied with their job and like they’re doing the right thing and then helping to connect the dots between what you’re asking of them and the values that they hold, because they could be very different based on generation.

Wofford: Beautiful advice. A big thanks to Elizabeth for joining us today.

eCornell student leads change at the United Nations

Dr. Adam Simpson, a recent alumni of eCornell’s Change Leadership certificate program, is the Manager of Global Programmes for UN Women in New York 

I recently completed the Change Leadership certificate program, developed by faculty at Cornell University, delivered through the SC Johnson College of Business. The program consists of four core courses and two leadership electives that have enabled me to address specific development goals within my organization.

As a leader and manager in United Nations Women, my organization always needs to be prepared for change. UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. As a global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established in 2010 to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide. Whether we are working on planned initiatives, or addressing the impacts of global volatility and unexpected situations, change is constant and inevitable in our field of work. In this program, I was able to identify and clarify my position in the power hierarchy of both my organization as well as across the broader United Nations system. Through this, I was able to better understand how the fluctuating power dynamics play into my role in the organization and how this affects organizational and system-wide decision making. Ultimately, this knowledge will help UN Women continue supporting Member States of the UN as they set global standards for achieving gender equality, and strengthen our work with governments and civil society to design the laws, policies, programs and services required to ensure that the standards are effectively implemented and truly benefit women and girls worldwide.

In addressing the changes I am involved with in my organization both corporately and on behalf of our global offices, the program has equipped me to better understand where and how large-scale change management initiatives are moving, and how I must implement the changes needed to sustain the momentum of these initiatives to advance our organizational mandate and maximize impacts. Specifically, the program helped me to analyze my organization and its tendencies toward change, to build approaches for identifying and influencing key stakeholders and overcome resistance, and explore critical decisions around negotiations and power dynamics.

I highly recommend this program for leaders, managers, and practitioners involved in addressing or leading large-scale, high-impact change management initiatives.

Cornell’s new certificate program boosts presentation skills to further career growth

The ability to present on any subject, in any place, to any audience is an invaluable asset for every professional. According a Forbes report on a new survey, seventy percent of Americans who give presentations agree that strong presentation skills are critical to their success at work. Yet twenty percent of survey respondents said they would do almost anything to avoid giving a presentation.

Today’s accomplished working professionals lead through their ability to communicate information and emotion effectively, even in the most intimidating circumstances. Cornell’s new Executive Presence certificate program will help learners conquer performance anxiety, refine public speaking skills, and build confidence, with the end goal of maximizing speaker-listener connection and furthering career growth.

“Executive Presence is not magic,” says faculty author David Feldshuh, Professor of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s a skillset that learners can master with practice and experience.”

The course teaches the learner how to use breathing, visual focus, voice, and gesture to deliver authentic and engaging presentations in a wide variety of settings, from formal speeches to personal interviews. Through the use of video feedback, self-coaching questions, rubric self-analysis, and expert real-time coaching, students learn to diminish restrictive presentation habits, including performance anxiety and mannerisms, and work to become more responsive and expressive. They gain increased insight by watching others present, and understand more fully the importance of effective body language and vocal variety.

“It’s not about achieving perfection or competing with someone else,” says Dr. Feldshuh. “In this class, you compete with yourself. The core skills, analytical tools, and transformative training exercises are intended to position the learner for a lifetime of development. A fundamental learning goal is for learners to know themselves as presenters, and become experts in self-coaching to ensure continued improvement after the course is completed.”

Aspiring leaders, managers, senior leaders and executives, CEOs, actors and performers, and anyone who wants to strengthen his or her ability to connect with others while speaking will find value in this certificate program, which is available online through eCornell.

Upon successful completion of the Executive Presence certificate program, which consists of a single, 15-week course, learners earn an Executive Presence Certificate from Cornell College of Arts and Sciences, and 60 professional development hours.

Cornell’s new Executive Women in Leadership certificate program

Women comprise 44 percent of the overall S&P 500 labor force, and yet they hold just 25 percent of executive and senior-level positions, occupy only 20 percent of board seats, and represent just 6 percent of CEOs. Power structures and gender dynamics often favor and reward the contributions of men over women, and even the most experienced and capable women can struggle to overcome these to attain leadership positions.

To empower accomplished professionals with the strategies and techniques needed to skillfully level the playing field while working to attain higher levels of leadership, Cornell has announced the launch of the new Executive Women in Leadership certificate program. Available online through eCornell, this certificate program equips learners with the tools needed to identify and reduce the gender bias and power dynamics present in their own organizations, and to bring greater parity to workplace culture.

“Research shows that when both women and men think of a leader, they think of a man,” says faculty co-author Dr. Deborah Streeter, the Bruce F. Failing, Sr., Professor of Personal Enterprise at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business. “For centuries, men have held the highest positions of power in most organizations, which has led people to associate leadership with stereotypically masculine traits, including aggression, decisiveness, strength, and willingness to engage in conflict. This certificate program allows learners to create a personalized action plan using recommended strategies to understand the gendered environments in which they are operating and then navigate the most effective path to leadership, status, and power in their organization.”

Women leaders in mid- to senior-level positions, women who hold or are interested in seeking board positions, women entrepreneurs and founders, and male leaders seeking to better understand gender dynamics in their organizations will find value in this program. Learners will refine their executive presence to improve interactions with people at higher power levels, improve their approach to negotiations, explore the strategies needed to develop a strong professional network, and assess the core competencies needed for board membership.

“In order to become a senior leader, an individual must first be perceived as one. This requires demonstrating myriad skills such as being an effective negotiator, a visionary, and an excellent networker, as well as personal characteristics such as gravitas, authenticity, and the right mix of authority and warmth,” says Dr. Susan S. Fleming, co-author, executive educator, and former Senior Lecturer at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. “Learners will explore ways to prepare for the challenges women face in developing and evidencing these skills and qualities.”
Once learners complete the Executive Women in Leadership certificate program, they are well-positioned to navigate institutional dynamics and achieve higher levels of leadership.

Courses include:

  • Power and Gender Dynamics
  • Developing Executive Presence for Women Leaders
  • Gender Bias and Negotiation Strategies
  • The Network Effect
  • Decoding the Gender Gap in Board Membership

Upon successful completion of all five courses, learners earn an Executive Women in Leadership Certificate from Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, 40 professional development hours, and 4 Continuing Education Units.

Cornell’s new certificate program develops skills to lead with character

Servant leadership, a leadership philosophy where an individual shares power, puts the needs of others first, and helps people develop and perform at a high level, has several distinct advantages over traditional leadership models. The University of Illinois at Chicago Business School recently conducted a study at national food chain Jason’s Deli. Among the surveyed restaurants, stores with servant leaders showed a 6 percent higher job performance, an 8 percent increase in positive customer service ratings, and a 50 percent higher staff retention rate.

Recognizing the powerful professional benefits servant leaders and their organizations experience, Cornell announces the new Servant Leadership certificate program to help learners develop into effective, successful leaders who demonstrate courage, humility, and compassion.

“Character is not something we have or don’t have,” says Amy Newman, faculty co-author and Senior Lecturer, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. “Leaders can develop character over time. This certificate provides you with skills needed to improve judgement and demonstrate character to develop a culture of servant leadership.”

Informal or formal leaders at any level in a for-profit or not-for-profit organization, as well as anyone who exacts influence at work will find value in this certificate program, which is available online through eCornell.

Using case studies and examples, learners will explore seven dimensions of leadership associated with strong character. Through self-reflection exercises, assessments, and activities, they will begin the work of developing these character dimensions.

“Servant leaders genuinely listen to their employees and focus on their development,” says faculty co-author Judi Brownell, Professor, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. “It’s truly a lifelong journey toward becoming the best leader you can be by fostering a culture of collaboration and service.”

Upon completion of the Servant Leadership certificate program, learners will understand how to develop trusting relationships through authenticity, integrity, and accountability, as well as how to implement performance management practices that reinforce service leadership.

Courses include:

  • Building Leadership Character
  • Authenticity, Integrity, and Accountability
  • Courage, Humility, and Compassion
  • Developing a Culture of Empowerment
  • Leading with Credibility

“Some incredibly successful companies, including Whole Foods, UPS, and Ritz Carlton, have implemented servant leadership,” says faculty co-author Tony Simons, Professor, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. “The benefits of a service leadership culture are undeniable. It is critical, though, that the implementing company take the care and time to consistently align policies, practices, and leader behaviors with the new direction. Half measures do not work.”

Upon successful completion of all five courses, learners earn a Servant Leadership Certificate from Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, 40 professional development hours, and 4 Continuing Education Units.

eCornell program will help leaders navigate change

Great leaders are always looking ahead, embracing change instead of resisting it and recognizing that the world has changed dramatically in the 21st century.

To prepare managers to lead effectively through “VUCA” (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity), Cornell has launched the VUCA Leadership certificate program. Available online through eCornell, this certificate program will help leaders develop internal strengths and strategic skills, and improve their ability to influence people both within their organization and outside of it to accomplish their vision.

“When organizational leaders are able to identify and reduce the impact of VUCA in the workplace, their teams and organizations thrive,” says Gen. George W. Casey Jr., faculty author of the certificate program and distinguished senior lecturer at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Casey is a retired four-star general who served as the 36th chief of staff of the United States Army.

The certificate program was developed for leaders and executives at all levels. Learners will match their strengths and weaknesses with the leadership characteristics that are vital for success in today’s fluid world, and they will be able to formulate action plans to increase their opportunities for success.

Courses include:

  • Leading in a VUCA World;
  • Developing and Communicating Vision and Strategy;
  • Building Great Teams;
  • Setting Internal and External Conditions for Success; and
  • Preparing for the Future.

Courses normally start every two weeks. Upon successful completion of all five courses, learners earn a VUCA Leadership Certificate from Cornell’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Cultivate strategic approach to organizational management

Learners gain the leadership agility skills needed to operate in complex environments

Great leaders are always looking ahead. They embrace change instead of resisting it, recognizing that the world’s landscape in the 21st century is vastly different from that of previous generations. In order for organizations to thrive, leaders must see the way forward and point the way ahead.

To prepare yourself to effectively lead through volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) and improve your organizations, Cornell has announced the launch of the new VUCA Leadership certificate program. Available online through eCornell, this certificate program will help leaders develop internal strengths and strategic skills, and improve their ability to influence people both within their organization and outside of it to accomplish their vision.

“When organizational leaders are able to identify and reduce the impact of VUCA in the workplace, their teams and organizations thrive,” says General George W. Casey, Jr., Faculty Author and Distinguished Senior Lecturer at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. “This certificate program equips you with the tools to lead more effectively in a VUCA world.”

Leaders and executives at all levels will find this certificate program valuable. Learners will match their strengths and weaknesses with the leadership characteristics that are vital for success in today’s fluid world, and be able to formulate action plans to increase their opportunities for success.

Upon completion of the VUCA leadership certificate program, learners can immediately begin applying their new skills in the workplace. Whether it’s developing a clear and succinct communications plan to implement your vision and strategy, constructing an effective vision statement, or identifying the antidotes for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, learners can address today’s challenges with the viable solutions learned through the program.

Courses include:

  • Leading in a VUCA World
  • Developing and Communicating Vision and Strategy
  • Building Great Teams
  • Setting Internal and External Conditions for Success
  • Preparing for the Future

Upon successful completion of all five courses, learners earn a VUCA Leadership Certificate from Cornell SC Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Order Out of Chaos: A How-To for Hospitality Planners and Developers

While project management is important in many occupations, for some it is especially crucial and can be a determining factor for success. Brad Wellstead, professor from Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, has over thirty years of experience in architecture and project management and has seen first-hand the importance successful project management means for planners and developers. He sat down with eCornell’s Chris Wofford to discuss the importance of leadership and management abilities in hospitality today.

What follows is an abridged version of that conversation.

Wofford: If you’re getting started in this field, what are the particular skills and ability that would benefit one most?

Wellstead: Good project management skills include understanding and getting your hand around scope of a project and being able to schedule and budget and build teams and so on. But then that works into the characteristics where you, as the leader of a project, it’s about team building and significantly excellent communication skills. You have to be a motivator and you have to be a coacher.

Wofford: Budget creation seems like it would be a particular challenge. Any advice on how to deal with that?

Wellstead: Real estate development is interesting because there’s usually one team that comes up with how much money we have to spend on a project. Then, it’s handed over to the group that has to actually execute the project. They say, “Okay. Here’s your budget and your scope, and, oh, by the way, a schedule and make sure it happens in all those conditions.” That handover, that nexus right there, is always a challenging one, particularly if there were any last-minute changes based on feasibility or needs of the project or so on. That gets smoothed over by having the involvement of a project manager who is running it throughout the entire project so, when in fact you are creating budgets, they are able to contribute and add-in the necessary factors of contingency, both time and money to incorporate those so that they’re in as part of it from the very beginning.

Wofford: When you’re involving stakeholders, what are the expectations as far as presenting the state of the project?

Wellstead: When you’re in the implementation stage, when you’re spending 60, 70% of your overall budget, design fees, and construction, that’s when the real money is getting spent. There should be often weekly meetings between the owner and the architect during the design phase and the project manager, of course.

That keeps them up to date and/or the project manager keeps the owner up to date on a weekly basis that way. As you move into construction, typically weekly, sometimes biweekly, meetings of the owner, architect, and contractor. Again, with the project manager representing the owner. That keeps everybody up to date with what’s going on.

Wofford: Tell me what somebody might get out of your course as it relates to what we have been discussing today?

Wellstead: It starts with the understanding of the project and getting your arms around it, the skills of creating a schedule and a budget and running through the whole impact management point of view with some … I don’t want to call them detours, but we talk about creating RFPs and team building and such.

And quality schedule and budget. I’ve never had an owner say, “You know what? Scope and schedule are critical thing. I don’t care about quality. Give me a bad project. It’s fine.” No, that never happens. It’s always come more down to schedule and budget.

Then, there’s this whole other part of that culture that we talk about in the course where it analyzes who the leaderships are and some of the things we talked about when we’re talking about contingency because it leads to understanding how you address contingencies. Is it white hot construction? Is it crazy municipality? Is it a community that’s going to be anti or for development? Is it a difficult site to work in and a whole lot of internal things that are happening as well as external things that could be happening so it gives you this really comprehensive, holistic view of the project that once having done that, you have a sense of how you’re going to move forward.

All of that pulls all that together. Those are the main things: the culture, schedule, budget and the team building and then the impact management aspects.

Want to hear more? Watch the recorded live eCornell WebSeries event, Order Out of Chaos: A How-To for Hospitality Planners and Developers, and subscribe to future events.

Why the ability to read data is just as important as the ability to read

Working with spreadsheets and analyzing data is no longer reserved only for those who crunch numbers. Today, all fields are relying more heavily on making data-driven decisions and utilizing spreadsheet modeling as a tool for growth. Donna Haeger, a Cornell professor of economics and management, sat down with eCornell’s Chris Wofford to discuss the growing impact spreadsheet modeling is having on business.

What follows is an abridged version of that conversation.

Wofford: How does spreadsheet modeling relate to business analytics? How do we distinguish the two?

Haeger: The spreadsheet modeling piece is really taking the unstructured data. We’re structuring it into an organized fashion. The business analytics piece is really the data-driven decision-making that we’re doing, so making the decisions on the model are what we’re doing when we’re performing business analytics. If we’re using optimization, we want the result of the model to tell us what we should do – how many of a particular product we should produce based on our criteria and our goals. We could also do predictive which is a forecast, like a simulation.

Wofford: What are some typical obstacles? For some people, this is very fresh and if you’re really starting to take your analytics and your modeling seriously, what are the typical obstacles that people run up against when they’re first starting to think about this as a strategy for their company?

Haeger: I think the biggest obstacle today is how much data we have. We’re drowning in data. I always tell my students data is not the problem. We have so much data that we don’t know what to do with it. Most of the startup companies that are working in data analytics are basically becoming specialists in spreadsheet modeling and other types of data modeling so that they can answer questions. And I like to say that every company that has data, which is every company at this point, they’re swimming in answers to questions they haven’t even begun to ask – and that’s a pretty amazing place to be.

Wofford: What is your experience as far as when you work with students? Can you just speak to that broadly about this as a career path or if somebody’s actually already established in a position, how might it benefit them to learn about this?

Haeger: That’s an interesting question and I get this all the time – things like what job titles am I looking for. I have not found a position, an internship or a permanent job, that does not involve data in the business realm as of late. And so that’s interesting because I like to say that this whole thing about data is ubiquitous, like it’s everywhere. There are very few jobs right now that do not relate to having some data literacy, so understanding how to take data and turn it from data to information, which is structuring the data and then analyzing it and turning it to some knowledge is it’s really hard to find a position where you don’t need to know how to do that.

In fact, we’re starting to hear that people are being encouraged to learn a programming language on top of being able to be working with the data.

Wofford: What is that?

Haeger: When you’re working with spreadsheet modeling, you have a lot of control over the data that you receive, however, it depends. Everyone has a choice. I call it a Venn diagram. We’ve gone from where we used to send an email to IT and say, “I need some data, please send it to me” and the business people would get the data from IT.

Wofford: I mean if we talk about data literacy across an organization, for example, there’s certainly a case to be made that everybody should be to literate in some way so we know what we’re talking about. Are visuals where it’s at?

Haeger: We all love pictures, right? I think most of us are visual and even if we’re not visual having the spreadsheet model – and when we say spreadsheet model, it could be a pivot table, table, columns, rows, a chart – when we turn it into a visualization, we’re answering a lot more questions in one image. When we illustrate it this way and if we do a good job with it, it’s much easier for people to answer their own questions and interact with the visual. We’re starting to actually create dashboards now where we’ll create several different pivot tables, pull out some visualizations, put them all on one tab and create slicers where the individual isn’t just looking at three or four images but also being able to hit the slicers and interact with the data. So now you’re answering thousands of questions by interacting with what you see on the dashboard.

Want to hear more? Watch the recorded live eCornell WebSeries event, Why the Ability to Read Data is Just as Important as the Ability to Read, and subscribe to future events.