In April 2021, a group of 40 diverse executives from 22 US-based companies convened via Zoom for the inaugural Advent Leadership Academy, a 13-week live online custom program developed by Advent International, a global private equity firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, in collaboration with Harvard Business School (HBS) Executive Education.
"We decided to launch the leadership academy here at Advent as a way to really accelerate the path of some of the rising stars within our portfolio companies," explained David Mussafer, Chairman and Managing Partner, Advent International. "We teamed up with Harvard Business School to create a custom-tailored curriculum to take back some really great practices around diversity and inclusion."
"We wanted to make sure we understood what the real challenges and opportunities were for these leaders in the organizations they were coming from," stated Linda Hill, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at HBS and faculty chair of the Advent Leadership Academy. "We spent a lot of time with the executives at Advent understanding what it takes to build a successful career in their portfolio companies."
"We supplemented that information with research we've been doing for a number of years on what it takes to become a high potential leader," Hill continued. "We knew we needed to prepare people who could be both value creators and game changers, people who knew how to deliver on what they should be doing, but also had imagination and knew how to deliver on what they could be doing."
Hill also knew from her research that leaders must be able to deal with three imperatives—managing themselves, managing their networks or relationships, and managing their teams—and that for underrepresented leaders, the networking piece was particularly challenging. "Building those relationships with peers and bosses is so critical," stated Hill. "And many of them don't even think about leadership as including that. They often see that as being about the politics of organizational life."
The resulting program design emphasized the enterprise-wide perspective of a general manager. While the curriculum incorporated elements of marketing, finance, and digital transformation, it featured sessions with Advent executives and HBS professors who provided big-picture points of view on how to think about a business.
"We wanted to make sure that the participants had time to think about themselves as an instrument to get things done," explained Hill. "They learned about building healthy relationships with bosses and peers and about developing a team that can support them in their efforts to contribute to the organization. And the final piece of it is, they're building networks across the globe and across industries."
In-depth discussions of a dozen different case studies supplemented learnings on leadership and strategy. "We are known for the case method," noted Hill. "The idea is you step into the shoes of a particular manager, look at the world from his or her point of view, and figure out what you should do. You're working with real problems that real people have faced. You get different perspectives looking at the same material, and it helps you get that big enterprise point of view."
"An element of the program that resonated with me the most definitely related to the case study approach," stated Academy participant Edie Reaves, Vice President, Operational Excellence and Quality, Quala. "The way that drove us to think through challenges in industry, specific to actual case examples, was a great way to apply and learn."
Small discussion groups further enhanced learning, collaboration, and networking. "The small discussion groups were one of the most impactful elements of the program," noted participant Alena Houston, Director of Finance, Dealer Channel, Culligan International. "It was an opportunity for a select few of us to meet right before the classes and really talk about what we got from the cases."
A final project provided participants with the opportunity to work in teams and apply their learnings to a real business challenge: recommend whether Advent should invest in a particular company. "We're trying to help with that transfer of learning and show the participants that they're already thinking differently about an investment than they might have been weeks ago before we started the program," explained Hill.
"The Advent Leadership Academy was a fantastic experience," concluded Reaves. "It was an opportunity to meet new people, really grow and expand my understanding of business and leadership, and become a stronger, more capable leader for the future."
With the understanding that an inclusive culture will enable them to attract and retain the talent they need to transform and grow their businesses, Advent is already looking beyond its inaugural program. "This is a long-term commitment for us at Advent, and it's the first step in the journey that we believe is going to create some really powerful new ideas and a whole host of really talented business leaders," stated Mussafer. "We believe that having a group of talented executives with diverse backgrounds is going to make us better as an organization."
For more insights, be sure to watch the Advent Leadership Academy video here.