Just about 15 yards separate Kunal Gohil’s and Jatinder Salwan’s hostel rooms at the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow (IIM-L) campus in Noida. The two are in the 2009-10 batch of the institute’s one-year management programme for working professionals. But a peek into their professional history shows that Gohil and Salwan come from worlds that are far apart.

At about 10° Celsius on a January afternoon in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, Gohil is entitled to ruing the harshness of winter. Aged 32, the software engineer has grown up and studied in sultry Mumbai. He has nine years of work experience, five of which have been immensely productive at Accenture. This stint, which began in Bangalore, included a lengthy period in the US.

For ex-Army man Salwan, though, the same January day is relatively warm. The 41-year-old has spent almost half his Army career in the harsh climes of Jammu & Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. His first posting, in 1989, was in Siachen. That is 20 years of work experience in the armed forces, encompassing functions like operations and human resource management. He has also been an instructor at the National Defence Academy (NDA), his alma mater.

Gohil says that Salwan’s inclination towards strategic thinking in classroom discussions is evident. Such cross-learning is what attracted the young Mumbaikar to this MBA programme for ‘grown ups’. “Mutual learning might have been less in a batch of participants who are younger and less experienced,” says the engineer, who chose this programme over one from a better-known B-school, where the work experience of most participants was 3-5 years. “For me, the MBA should be as much about learning from peers as learning from professors. The people here have at least seven years of work experience. The feel of the class is different.”

Choose your crowd. That’s essentially what Gohil is advising those embarking on executive education. It’s an important differentiator while choosing courses, especially in a marketplace where there are about 25 worthy institutes, each offering 30-40 executive-education courses. Here are four more pointers that will help you better align your goals and work-life situation with your objective of higher learning.

Tie it in with your experience and work life

It is essential for rising managers to measure how far they have come and where they want to go, and identify areas of improvement. As they enter their thirties, many software engineers tend to tire of the operations function, having spent about seven years in that line. Consulting seems like a logical step up, but this calls for a macro understanding of organisations.

The executive MBA—the basic MBA course that has become synonymous with executive education—helps in shifts of this nature. “If people have been at operational levels and wish to change their streams, there are opportunities today to major in marketing, systems or HR,” says Professor Reema Khurana, Chairperson of the 15-month executive management programme at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT) in Ghaziabad. “In effect, they can move up the ladder in their industry. Plus, they have the diversity of subjects.”

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30 Courses For Rising Managers

From young executives to CEOs, bankers to defence officers, from logistics to M&As, three years to three days, these courses have plenty to offer India Inc’s managers and put them on the fast track.

* Does not include foreign component | Fee is subject to change | Source: Institutes

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If your finances are comfortable and if you have the stability in your organisation, take a study sabbatical. An executive MBA residential programme takes 12-15 months. However, if leaving your job is an issue, look at courses where classes are held on weekends. In both cases, the institute matters. Your organisation might have tie-ups with institutes or might value certain institutes more than others. If the institute is not in your organisation’s coveted list, make sure it is approved by the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education).

Then, there are short programmes—‘open courses’ that range between 2 days and 2 weeks. Once you have a basic MBA and direction in your job profile, these courses provide focused bursts of learning in chosen areas. More significantly, they are a platform to engage with industry peers. For most managers closer to top management roles, executive learning is a wonderful way to stay engaged with best practices or their functional expertise.

One year is better than two for an MBA

For most professionals with more than 5-8 years of experience, a regular MBA is not a feasible option, as it means two years away from their jobs. Keeping that in mind, institutes have tailored their full-time executive MBA programmes to one year (15 months, in some cases). That’s short enough for working professionals to take a sabbatical without losing out on growth at the work place, while being long enough to partake of some rigorous learning.

One-year programmes are the tried-and-valued model for working professionals in India. They basically cram the regular, two-year MBA programme into one. So, they are demanding. For working professionals who can cope with the intensity, this is a better option than pursuing a regular MBA.

Get your boss to back you

This is a win-win method: expressing your desire to learn as you earn. Organisations typically have tie-ups with institutes, notably the IIMs, for six-month general management programmes. But remember, the course content of such management development programmes are tailored to the company you work in. So, the certification value could be diluted beyond its boundaries.

People can use executive MBA courses to move up the ladder in their industry. Plus, they have diverse subjects to choose from.”Reema Khurana, Chairperson, IMT Ghaziabad’s executive programme in management

For an extended academic experience, that means going beyond the company-institute programmes. Still, it’s worth involving your line manager (or immediate superior) and company HR while choosing your programme. It helps link your higher education to growth and project work in your organisation. If you can find ways to integrate your course programme and work, it lends weight to the chances of your company sponsoring your higher-education stint.

Even institutes are increasingly promoting such linkages. At the Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, students in the second year of the part-time executive MBA programme are encouraged to take on a project of strategic importance in their own organisations. “If the project is about the company’s product introduction in China, and this person has done the project, he is going to stake claim to lead that project,” says Professor RS Veeravalli, Director, Corporate Initiatives and PG Global Executive Program in Management. “And if it’s congruent to this person’s own career goals, it’s even better.”

Some of this existed before, says Veeravalli. “But it used to be for its own sake. And companies used to tolerate such projects. Here, everybody is an interested party. If the company is investing, they want a superior performer at the end of it.” Great Lakes is going a step further. “We are reaching out to the HR departments (of company-sponsored candidates) in order to align with their developmental agenda,” says Veeravalli.

Understand what executive learning can and can’t do

The benefits of executive education are far more nuanced than those of its two-year equivalent. Photo journalist Sebastian John did a short course in ‘managing digital libraries’ from IIM Kozhikode in the midst of a professional stint in Delhi in the early-2000s. This was at a time when the shift from traditional photography to digital formats had occurred. “The benefit is that you get to know a new area in your function. It did not necessarily help me get a better job immediately,” recalls John. “But yes, when I went for jobs, employers did notice that, unlike many others, I was aware of the digital side of photography, especially storage.” Associated Press in New Delhi and National Geographic in the US were among those that took notice. Watch out for courses unique to your trade: they might just give you the knowledge edge.

The benefits of executive education come with the promise of greater surety. One, it keeps you engaged with your profession and gives you knowledge intervention. Two, it broadens your circle of networks. Three, it enriches your macro-view of business. In executive education, it really pays to be true to yourself and your work experience.

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Methodology

There were two attributes we sought to offer through this listing of 30 courses for rising managers: quality and variety. Quality: the best courses in the best institutes, so as to help managers take a leap in learning and job profile. Variety: a wide selection of course subjects, so as to make it relevant to a wider pool of managers, who constitute our core readership.

To start with, the pedigree of the institutes was critical. The choice of institutes was based on interactions in 2009 with HR executives of 30 leading companies in India, home-grown and foreign, new- and old-economy. We asked them the names of the institutes they were interested in tying up with for executive education or whose courses they would be willing to sponsor.

There were few surprises in this list of 25 institutes (Indian and global). Invariably, companies chose institutes that have been around for more than 15 years. Some also named recent additions such as the Indian School of Business (whose governing committee includes industry leaders like KV Kamath and Anil Ambani) and Great Lakes Institute of Management.

Next, the courses. Based on interactions with managers who had availed of executive education and professors, and our own research, we arrived at a list of 75 courses from these institutes. Since this listing was intended to cater to individuals, programmes customised for specific companies (for example, a Tata Motors’ programme with IIM Ahmedabad) were not considered.

Then, we pruned this list of 75 courses to 30. This was again done based on interactions with managers and professors, and our own research. Due attention was given to diversity in the list of 30 courses, as well as to features like class composition (average age or work experience), participant budgets, location of institutes, exposure to global practices, and timings.

The 30 courses have been organised under six heads: executive MBAs, specialised executive programmes, middle-management courses, top-management courses, niche courses and international courses. Find your fit.