Professionals and employers regularly invest in executive education to sharpen skills, broaden perspective and prepare leaders for new responsibilities. However, research and participant experience show that translating insights gained from short courses into tangible workplace action is often harder than expected.
Participants say that once they return to the workplace, competing priorities, a lack of follow-up and coursework that feels too far removed from day-to-day organizational realities contribute to widening a gap between what they learned and what they can execute. Some executive education courses are too heavy on theory and offer too little practical transfer.
Business schools are redesigning their programs to close that gap, shifting from dense content to practical learning through real application, experimentation and follow-up support.
Executive education lessons not anchored in workplace realities
Executive education can imbue participants with a strong awareness of how to improve workflows at the personal and organizational level, but awareness alone does not drive change. Leaders often enjoy the learning experience, but when they return to their organizations, familiar pressures take over and the new ideas rarely stick.
At the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany, Jasmin Engel, director of professional and executive education, says many participants struggle because the learning is not anchored to their real world.
“Executives often face an overload of theoretical input based on generic studies, with too little relevance to their specific context,” she says. Without a clear bridge between insight and environment, “insight rarely turns into sustained action”.
At Babson College in the U.S., Danna Greenberg, a professor of organizational behavior, argues that one of the biggest obstacles is not insight but absorption.
“We all know that excitement of finishing a multi-day professional development program with a long list of how we will apply that learning to our work and our teams,” she says.
Returning to daily pressures, however, often derails the best intentions.
“We may be motivated to change but without opportunities to test out our new ideas, to reflect on what does and doesn’t work and why, and to experiment further, learning doesn’t become imprinted in us, our teams, or our organizations,” she says.
Another barrier, according to Greenberg, is that executives often lack someone who will track their progress.
“We often need the support of a coach or peer who can help us reflect and hold us accountable,” she says, adding, “few professional development programs provide participants with this follow-up and coaching such that they can create lasting change.”
Business schools adapt executive education courses to convert learning to action
Executive education providers say leaders will increasingly need to turn learning into action quickly. Short courses can ignite change, but only if they stay connected to the workplace long after the program ends.
To address this gap, programs are being re-engineered to function less like stand-alone workshops and more like supported change processes. A new generation of executive education is built around fewer abstract models and more real problems, fewer intensive bursts and more continuous support, and less passive learning and more applied behavior.
Engel says the Frankfurt School is planting practice directly into the program format.
“Our programs embed practical relevance by combining current insights from both research and real-world practice,” she says.
Courses now emphasize real cases, interactive group work tied to authentic challenges faced by firms, and structured exchanges with practitioners.
These approaches, explains Engel, allow participants to “directly apply learning and create impulses they can carry back into their organizations.”
Greenberg says Babson is experimenting with new program designs that stretch learning out over time, rather than packing it into a few intense days.
“Rather than traditional models… we have been working with clients on innovative course designs in which content is delivered in ways in which participants are able to apply that learning, reflect on their experiences and then deepen this learning,” she says. These include blended delivery models, such as “combining synchronous, async and even in-person learning” and longer timelines – where programs unfold over a few months.
Greenberg says the courses also incorporate real-world experimentation, capstone projects and coaching.
Together, she says, these help executives embed new behaviors rather than simply admire new ideas.
