Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School and the faculty chair for the Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB) program.
Below, she explains what makes CLIMB unique, the case study method's value, and how the critical skills business leaders need today are different than they used to be.
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DOWNLOAD NOWProfessor Amy Edmondson on HBS Online’s CLIMB Program
HBS Online: What are you excited for learners to take away from CLIMB?
Amy Edmondson: CLIMB teaches a powerful combination of ideas and skills and how they fit together so that you can grow as a business leader. As a participant, you have the opportunity to develop vital skills and learn useful frameworks in foundational topics like leadership, strategy, and finance, as well as forward-looking concepts in our new short courses: Dynamic Teaming, Leading in the Digital World, and Personal Branding.
You also can actively engage with a global cohort of peers. It isn't like a webinar where you sit back and hear a lecture—you do different course activities, interact with people, practice the skills you learn, get feedback, and grow your network simultaneously.
The content, network, and ability to self-reflect and customize your career make CLIMB valuable whether you’re new to leadership or have several years of experience.
Why is case-based learning foundational to CLIMB?
The reason why cases are so powerful is that stories are memorable. Our human psychology is built to remember narratives with beginnings, middles, and ends. These are human stories that build empathy and motivation in learners. And these are true stories—stories of real people in real business situations.
Throughout CLIMB, you’ll be presented with real-world challenges business leaders have faced, including Dame Kate Bingham, chair of the United Kingdom COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force; Rachel Jarrett, co-chief executive officer of Zola; and Per Hugandar, strategic advisor at SEB, a Nordic financial services group.
You’ll apply your learning using course concepts and the diversity of your peers’ perspectives to analyze problems and determine a path forward. The learning experience is quite different than a professor teaching an elegant framework that may be conceptually rigorous but not easy to apply to the real, messy situations you may find yourself in. The program's blend of theory and practice allows you to develop practical skills.
Your course, Dynamic Teaming, is one of CLIMB's new short courses. What’s that course about?
Dynamic Teaming recognizes that most teamwork today involves fluid membership and shifting challenges and conditions over time.
Historically, research has emphasized the need for stable, well-designed teams to accomplish relatively predictable, ongoing tasks or finite projects. Yet, today, while some teams still fit that category, many others wrestle with shifting membership—colleagues who are present for one part of a project but not another. Now, the most common forms of collaboration aren't contained within stable teams but rather occur in shifting, dynamic forms driven by the nature of work at different times.
My course is about helping people cope with these changing demands and providing the tools and skills to do it well. You study decision-making, navigating conflict, agile management techniques, inclusion, and leading teams in a high-stakes, volatile world.
You also build your leadership skills by examining tools, processes, and practices for guiding dynamic teamwork and learn how to embrace productive failure as you explore solutions to business challenges.
Related: How to Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace
In addition to your course, two other CLIMB courses focus on business skills for today and the future. Can you tell us about those?
These aren’t courses you would’ve seen in a business school curriculum 30 years ago—and maybe not even 20 years ago. But they’re essential in our current business environment with much more career fluidity and digitalization.
Professor Jill Avery’s course is on personal branding, which gives you the opportunity to think about what personal branding is, consider how you want to be seen, and gain tools to create and leverage your own brand.
Professor Linda Hill’s course is on digitalization and digital tools. She looks at digitalization from management’s perspective—rather than the engineer’s—and explores what you need to do to lead effective teams and organizations going through transitions.
Listen to HBS Professor Linda Hill’s thoughts on leading change and the paradoxes of management on The Parlor Room podcast, or watch the episode on YouTube.
How can learners customize their CLIMB experience?
You can customize your curriculum by selecting two electives: one finance and one open elective.
You can choose any finance and accounting course for your finance elective to learn essential skills that align with your role and goals.
For the open elective, you can select any certificate course from HBS Online’s ever-growing 20-plus course catalog, allowing you to tailor your curriculum to have the greatest impact on your career.
Related: How to Choose Your CLIMB Electives
How does CLIMB differ from other programs in the market?
CLIMB and other programs differ in a few ways, including format, curriculum, and learning model.
The CLIMB course platform is 100 percent online and asynchronous, so you can complete content on your schedule while meeting weekly deadlines. You’re also put into teams during the program so that you can develop connections with other CLIMB participants through discussion, exercises, and a live simulation.
Related: CORe vs. CLIMB: Which HBS Online Credential Program Is Right for You?
The program offers two different paths—New Leaders and Experienced Leaders—each with curriculums tailored to your professional experience. This allows HBS Online to deliver the course content that’s most applicable and useful to your career.
CLIMB enables you to apply your learning through real-world examples and experience HBS’s case method. As we walk through cases, you leverage course concepts, tools, frameworks, and peers’ perspectives to put yourself in business leaders’ shoes and analyze the problems they face.
Additionally, CLIMB features a mix of required and elective offerings, including courses in entrepreneurship and innovation, marketing, and digital transformation.
How does CLIMB meet professionals where they are in their careers?
It was critical for us to design a program that would be as helpful and impactful as possible. We did that in two ways: through the curriculum and the cohort experience.
CLIMB has two paths with different required courses in leadership and strategy. The New Leaders path is for people earlier in their careers and teaches concepts for aspiring or new managers. The Experienced Leader path is for those with more experience, who might make more team and organization-wide decisions.
Equally important is having a comparable peer group. You’ll be in teams and interact with people at similar career stages throughout the program so you can maximize your learnings and deepen your network.
Do you want to build vital, forward-looking business skills with a global cohort of like-minded peers? Explore our yearlong Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB) program, comprising seven courses for leading in the modern business world. Download the CLIMB brochure to learn more about its curriculum, admissions requirements, and benefits.