Curriculum - Intro and Habits of Executives

SG2X PLAYBOOK – Gender Smart Exec’s Program Curriculum

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THE GENDER-SMART EXEC’S PROGRAM CURRICULUM INTRODUCTION AND HABITS OF EXECUTIVES

Session #0

INTRODUCTION TO THE EXEC'S PROGRAM & HABITS OF EXECUTIVES Length: 2 hours. 90 minutes of lecture and 30 minutes of breakout group work SG2X PLAYBOOK – Gender Smart Exec’s Program Curriculum

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Format: Virtual using Zoom meeting, and shared with breakout rooms for a portion of the session Delivery Tool: PowerPoint Purpose: To kick off The Exec’s Program Learning Objectives: 

Understand the purpose, objectives, format and curriculum of The Exec’s Program

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Understand what to expect

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Connect with participants and instructors

Agenda: Opening; Panel Discussion with Exec’s Program Alumni; Exec’s Program Overview; Expert Opinions from RENEW; Breakout Session; Summary; Closing Description: During this session we kick-off The Exec’s Program. The session begins with Dagmawit Shiferaw, RENEW’s senior investment manager, welcoming members and providing a short overview of RENEW. Then, a panel of former graduates of The Exec’s Program is invited to share their experience with taking the program and implementing the habits and disciplines at their companies. The goal of the panel is to provide context for the new participants about the importance of implementation. The panel is made up of one male and two female CEOs. The CEOs are from Ethiopia, and in future cohorts the panel will have members from across East Africa. The panel is facilitated by RENEW’s managing partner Laura Davis. The session is then turned over to the lead instructor, Matthew Davis, who provides participants with background on why the program was started and what the objectives of the program are – to build disciplined, gender-smart, successful companies in East Africa. Matthew provides statistics about the challenges companies have with scaling and explains that weak management is the number one. In East Africa, the challenge is often because of a lack of exposure to what good management looks like.

Matthew uses the example of an executive being like an athlete that practices basic skills and routines until they become habitual. These same skills are shared by successful executives and those will be taught during the program.

Matthew then lays the foundation for the program by explaining what bad and good executives look like and how successful executives think about a business, i.e., that the business is the product. Matthew also describes the concept of the three personas of a successful entrepreneur and executive – the technician, the entrepreneur and the manager – and how the manager is often the weakest and most overlooked of the three. Matthew explains how the program focuses on building the manager muscle and finishes the intro with an overview of the personal habits that will be elaborated on in the first full session. The participants then break into groups to share their expectations for the program. The information shared in the breakout sessions is gathered by RENEW team members, and the breakout concludes with the sharing of feedback. Finally, the expectation for participation and a summary are provided, concluding with the introduction for the next session.

How This Session is Gender-Smart: From the start, we make it clear how important having a gender-balanced leadership team is to business success. We present supporting statistical data in the module’s slides and emphasize that