Participants arrive confident and ready to take on the challenge. Each person has been hand-selected for a high level of technical knowledge in quality and compliance, a demonstrated leadership potential, and an ability to manage teams. As a whole, the group thinks logically and efficiently. They are used to getting things done and are accustomed to being successful. They have no idea that during the year, they will be challenged to act differently, think differently, and “be” in new ways.

Each class goes through a powerful transformation over the course of the year. They shift in the way they think about the business, increase their awareness of themselves as leaders, sharpen their ability to identify business needs, deepen their relationships and expand their global networks, learn how to influence at a board level, learn how to get to the heart of an issue, learn how to work as a global team, and learn how to orient and move forward in the midst of ever-increasing data and continuous change.

All of this learning is experiential; participants learn by doing in a carefully designed action learning program that is both structured and improvisational. This program has produced more than fifteen vice presidents of quality in the past four years and is widely supported by executive staff for its ability to deliver consistent business results.

Each business challenge is purposely broad at the outset. The class is tasked with researching the impact and nuances of the issue to produce a solution that leads to transformational change in the organization. This means researching the issue, soliciting the voice of the customer, producing a variety of solution ideas, vetting these ideas with an executive group, negotiating to solidify scope, developing the actual deliverables, championing and selling the deliverables internally, and implementing the final solution within the organization. This research-based creative process becomes the context of learning for the year. This context offers timely experience in an environment that allows participants to make mistakes, learn, and grow.

The project itself becomes a multilevel win-win for J&J. The business gets a novel solution to a critical problem. Program participants learn how different parts of the organization work and what it means to think and act at the executive level. Executives involved in the program see candidates in action and become acquainted with individuals they might not have known before, and Johnson & Johnson gets a pool of talent that is calibrated on the values and leadership performance expectations that will lead the company into the future.

Johnson & Johnson quality executives are also involved at a programmatic level. One or two executives are designated each year as project champions, and they become the main executive audience for the class. They are chosen for their subject matter expertise and ability to deliver concise and pointed feedback throughout the year. Five to ten additional executives are designated as project sponsors who make presentations to the class and participate in small-group discussions, subteam activities, and guidance sessions. Project sponsors typically attend the face-to-face class residential sessions three weeks out of the year and provide ongoing support during the virtual work periods. Many sponsors are also members of the GQC.

The rewards of executive involvement are powerful, and there are obvious benefits and more subtle ones. Involving executive talent ensures that the class is mentored by the people they will ultimately work with and that the solution the class creates is relevant and useful to the business. The involvement of executives at these various levels also builds community. To many executives, the activity of bringing up the next generation of leaders is personally rewarding, and executives at the ground level tend to seize the opportunity to shape and guide their successors. Aside from the personal satisfaction inherent in giving back and preparing for the future, executives also tend to enjoy the bonding that occurs with an opportunity to reflect and talk about leadership with their peers. An esprit de corps is built as executives share their personal leadership journeys and give feedback to the class as an executive team.

This out-and-about approach helps participants build new relationships that break the traditional stereotypes that quality people are the regulation police. Not only does this creative approach break stereotypes, but the people in the organization who are solicited for their thoughts, needs, and opinions also become supporters of the class (and often the project itself ).

With an emphasis on relationships and teamwork, the EQLD program gives participants a year-long experience from which to create a powerful personal network of their peers within J&J that crosses company boundaries and franchise organizations. The location of the residency section is selected to expose the participants to the breadth and diversity of J&J companies around the world. This personal network becomes another benefit to the company at large, because the capacity for individuals to get things done within the organization is magnified and expanded on a global scale. This is especially significant in a company like J&J, where the management structure is highly decentralized and the company is divided into many different franchise organizations, each with its own focus, procedures, customers, and concerns. By the end of the year, EQLD participants say that they feel comfortable picking up the phone and calling any one of their classmates for help or advice. The existence of a strong network is cited regularly in retention surveys as one of the important reasons executives stay at J&J, and new J&J recruits say that the presence of programs like EQLD was an important factor in their decision to join the company.

Class participants are also measured at the corporate level according to a global leadership profile, which is administered and monitored by their supervisors. The competencies within the profile are supported by the three large aims of the EQLD program: focusing globally, managing risk, and driving collaboration. These three elements have been combined in a model for quality leadership that includes technical expertise, management ability, and leadership ability, which formalizes a structure for quality leadership at J&J. This model guides the EQLD curriculum and forms the basis of how participants are evaluated for future assignments.

When the program starts, participants look to the faculty for “the answer” to their business challenge (What should we do here? How should we approach this?), and faculty watch participants struggle as they use old methods of thinking to find “the” answer, assuming that “the right answer” already exists.

At the beginning of the EQLD program, faculty must watch teams be uncomfortable and make mistakes, without giving in to the temptation to step in and give answers. This ability to let participants have their own experience is one element that makes the ultimate learning so profound. Although there may be struggles in the beginning, the stage is set for deep learning, and participants leave the program feeling personal ties to their own experience and their own growth.

This does not mean that faculty remain outside the process. The faculty are intricately involved, guiding the class with questions and teaching tools that will ultimately help participants figure out how to organize themselves, gather information, and come up with a unique solution.

The need to interact and negotiate also makes participants ripe for learning new skills and tools that they can use immediately. Team dynamics, interviewing approaches, decision-making tools, and meeting facilitation processes are all presented to the class and then applied right away. After each learning module, participants are asked to share with a partner, share with the group, or work as a group to apply the learning to the task at hand. If, for example, a module on interviewing is presented, participants get on the telephone and computer and conduct some best practice research. The knowledge is applied immediately. This application approach coupled with guided reflection (So how did that work? What questions do you have now?) ultimately teaches participants how to build their own skills. The underlying philosophy here is that teaching new skills is good, but the most powerful approach is to teach participants how to build their own skills.

Asking powerful questions is the central skill for this leadership area. Participants conduct “Q-storming” exercises, where the objective is not what you know but what questions there are, and they learn to use questions as a way to build understanding and move a group forward. Point of view is crucial here. Questions are not asked from a blaming perspective (Why did this happen?) but from a generative perspective (Who do we need to get on board? What are our gifts here? Who can we invigorate?).

By showing participants how to use questions to get others interested in problem solving and improving, participants learn to engage their peers at higher levels of creativity. This questioning approach also opens the door to participants’ getting practice at being curious and open. This is typically where reality starts looking less one-dimensional and more richly multilayered, and participants get to practice dropping their own agendas to listen to what is actually being said.

What is important is that faculty are willing to drop their agendas and deal with what is happening in the room. This ensures that the teaching is addressing the needs of the participants and, more important, models skilled leadership for participants.

This approach to modeling improvisation goes hand in hand with providing opportunities for participants to improvise. In the first week of the program, participants interact with senior executives to discuss the business challenge, with the expectation that they will have to jump in without formal preparation. These opportunities to listen attentively and respond to what is happening in the moment occur throughout the program and are an explicit part of the learning.

The EQLD faculty members are cohesive as well, and the support that they get from each other makes the process of running the program collaborative, creative, and fun. Participants sense this cohesion and know that they can go to any one of the staff for insight, support, or assistance.

As part of that process, the class gives executive update presentations to project champions and sponsors every three months, and these executives react as a group to how they see the project progressing. In these feedback sessions, executives make challenges and offer suggestions. They respond to the thinking behind the presentation and how ideas are presented.

In the beginning of the program, this feedback can be quite harsh. This feedback is not something the faculty shields participants from, because it communicates something that participants must understand: what is expected of them by a group of their future peers. It also tends to drive home the learning in an unforgettable way.

As the class progresses and begins to make the transformation to more executive thinking and behavior, the relationship with champions and sponsors typically becomes more collegial because the participants have learned how to conduct themselves as colleagues, and these senior executives can see and respect their individual growth. This relationship with champions and sponsors is important for exposing participants to what it is like to be an executive. It also gives them personal experience with a set of people they may work with one day.

Participants get exposure to other leaders in the organization through speakers and presentations. These talks are typically set up as storytell ing presentations with a question and dialogue session afterward, so participants can ask questions and interact with company presidents, chief financial officers, and business leaders they would not otherwise meet.

By exposing participants to as many leaders as possible in a format that encourages dialogue and interaction, participants come to understand what kind of people are leading the organization in personally inspiring and memorable ways.

In the course of the year, participants must research a challenging business issue, come up with a project or set of projects to address the issue, work together to complete the project, identify an owner of the project, and market as well as implement the project. At the May graduation, the class makes a final presentation to the Global Quality Council about what they have accomplished in the course of the year.

The focus of the second residential session is to scope the project and get executive sign-off on the approach. The week is characterized by small-group work sessions, personal presentations by specific executives, and tools for making decisions and dealing with conflict within groups. The week culminates with a presentation to the champions and sponsors about what the class intends to create and the rationale behind it.

The focus of the third residential session is to market the project and finalize the implementation plans (and get executive sign-off on the approach). The week is characterized by small-group work sessions, large-group discussions, and tools for selling an idea or a strategy within an organization. The week culminates with a presentation to champions and sponsors about the marketing pitch for the project and how the class intends to implement their project.

Most classes also create a project management team, a subteam that has no actual project work responsibilities but manages the logistics of keeping the class well informed and communicating with each other. Often the project management team takes on the more strategic roles of updating sponsors in the virtual period and making large group-related decisions.

Helping participants identify when something is not working is one of the roles faculty plays. Encouraging a team to do something about it is typically a first big “aha!” for a team. As the program progresses, participants develop an understanding of what is working and what is not, and typically they make adjustments on their own.

The teaching faculty are supported by two logistics staff members who handle all of the hotel arrangements, transportation, meeting setup, and sponsor arrivals and departures. This staff is on-site during the residential sessions working alongside faculty.

Her contributions to quality and operational excellence span a twenty-five-year history with Johnson & Johnson. Her career began with Ethicon and included roles in R&D and worldwide operations. She held positions of increasing responsibility within the quality and regulatory organizations at Ethicon and has significant experience in manufacturing process transfers, new business acquisitions and integrations, and regulatory compliance, interfacing with regulatory authorities and notified bodies worldwide. She was most recently executive director, Medical Device and Diagnostics, and strategic quality leadership at Johnson & Johnson Corporate. During her three years at Corporate, she was recognized as a leader within both Johnson & Johnson and in industry in building the Executive Quality Leadership Development. The program has produced more than fifteen vice presidents of quality for Johnson & Johnson operating companies around the globe. She has worked within a number of franchises within MD&D to improve business results, including the Diabetes Franchise. In addition, she represents quality on the MD&D Vice President of Operations Council; is a member of the Global Quality Council, the Johnson & Johnson Corporate Worldwide Operating Group; and cochairs the MD&D Vice President of Quality Council.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from Texas Tech University and is a graduate of the Executive Development Program for Senior Regulatory Affairs professionals from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is also a Johnson & Johnson Certified Six Sigma Black Belt and coinventor of the Performance Indicator tool, a Process Excellence-based risk prioritization tool deployed across Johnson & Johnson, delivering significant results in recall reduction and driving business results.

He is the founder and director of Westwood International, a company dedicated to executive education, coaching, consulting, and cultural improvement. He is certified by Interaction Associates in several of its coaching models and performance technologies; a certified trainer for Carlson Learning Products, Inscape; and a sanctioned trainer in Performance Management through Aubry Daniels Associates. Zlevor is a former senior manager and director with Arthur Andersen Business Consulting, where he founded and directed the national team on leadership development. Zlevor is also the founder and past coordinator of the Community in Organizations Conference, an annual event that investigates the knowledge, process, and practice of creating significant, effective, and satisfying relationships within organizations. He has recently published in several books, including The Change Champion’s Field Guide by Louis Carter, Marshall Goldsmith, Norman Smallwood, and James Bolt.

Zlevor has done postgraduate course work in organizational development. He has a master’s degree from Boston College in spirituality and a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence University in biology.

Her work with Westwood International has focused on providing leadership development training, client coaching, and strategic business direction. Prior to joining Westwood, Ray spent eleven years helping organizations in crisis repair relationships, leverage resources, and conduct business more efficiently. Her experience also includes three years with Deloitte & Touche, designing implementations and managing training teams for computer systems administering state and federal programs.

Ray holds a bachelor of science degree in linguistics and neurosci ence from Indiana University and a master of science in adult education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.