Taking the Lead in Leadership

New UTD Center Aims to Teach, Train and Refine Business Leaders

By John H. Ostdick


"Effective leadership comes with significant and sometimes awesome
responsibilities. There are as many or more instances of suffering than
glory. Effective leaders need to be mature and well-grounded in their own
values and beliefs, and the professional will that drives them needs to be
accompanied by a moral and ethical will that sustains them against the
pressures that inevitably exist to take a shortcut." - Jerry Hoag,
director of The Leadership Center at UTD


The vision behind The Leadership Center at UTD, which opens its doors in
the fall, is based on the simple truth that has sometimes eluded corporate
America: Effective, ethical leadership breeds good business.

The center will birth a curriculum that includes modules on the history
and theory of leadership, leadership fundamentals, responsibility of
leadership and importance of ethics, and the impact of foreign cultures on
leadership styles. It is the brainchild of and will be directed by Gerald
H. (Jerry) Hoag, longtime university friend and past chairman of The
School of Management (SOM) Advisory Council. Mr. Hoag has 35 years of
management consulting experience, including more than 30 years as a
partner working with senior management.

What his long experience helped him develop, he says, is a firm belief
that "leadership qualities and skills can be learned and improved through
a systematic program of classical teaching combined with real-life
experiences" that are imparted by people in leadership roles.


Speakers and a systematic approach

"I think we need to harness the huge body of knowledge that exists in
leadership and apply it in a systematic and effective manner for students
and people within corporations who are in leadership roles so it can be
useful to them," says Mr. Hoag, who has also served as a UTD guest
lecturer.

The curriculum will include an executives-in-residence program and a
speakers program that will pull in leading international voices on the
subject. Mr. Hoag envisions a speakers program that each year recruits
four to six prominent speakers who will come to the UTD campus for
full-day visits. In addition to their lectures, these experts will be
available to share their wisdom in sessions with students.

The center addresses both strategic goals of UTD and practical needs of
the corporate world, says Dr. Hasan Pirkul, SOM dean.

"The events of the last two to three years have shown that there is a
clear need for leadership," Dean Pirkul says. "Some leaders in business
have failed spectacularly. Many corporations have changed CEOs, some
multiple times. That points to the importance of this issue and the need
for further study."

Mr. Hoag, who earned his master's degree at Stanford University, is
instrumental to that process. The consulting business he helped found in
the mid-60s flourished and was acquired by Towers Perrin in 1986, at which
point he became managing partner for Towers Perrin's Southwest General
Consulting Operations.

In 1990, he was hired to direct the Dallas office of A.T. Kearney, a
global management consulting company. He oversaw a rapid expansion; the

Dallas office grew from seven consultants to more than 125 in his first
seven years. The firm became a wholly owned subsidiary of Electronic Data
Systems Corp. in 1995. He retired as a senior officer of the firm in 1999
but remained active until approaching Dean Pirkul with the center concept
almost a year ago.

He received an enthusiastically positive response.


Bringing together academics and practitioners

"The leadership center fits with an area we are building," Dean Pirkul
explains. "We've hired one of the leading management-strategy academics in
the nation, Dr. Gregory Dess [who holds UTD's Andrew R. Cecil Endowed
Chair in Applied Ethics]. Jerry Hoag brings a tremendous amount of
understanding of his field. Combining the knowledge of such a leading
academic with the wisdom of a skilled practitioner is critical to this
project's success. If you have one without the other, it won't work."

Meetings between Mr. Hoag and Professor Dess helped turn concepts and
goals into a workable program. "Greg is the key professor in developing
the curriculum, helping me put people together with topics, and will
surely be teaching core components," Mr. Hoag says. "His teaching
background in strategic leadership management and research and authorship
on the subject fit the center's mission perfectly.

"The research element is critical to our efforts," Mr. Hoag says. "As an
academic institution, you never do anything that isn't based on research.
What you learn from research - whether it involves CEO compensation or
executive ethics - is important as you go forward and bring it into
teaching."

Mr. Hoag is searching for corporate sponsors to provide seed funding,
two-year commitments of $25,000 annually. In return, the companies will
receive vouchers for five courses each year to use for their own
executives. He also envisions that each lecture in the guest lecture
series will be underwritten by a single sponsor. "Eight to 12 companies
have expressed interest in pursuing such a relationship," he says. At the
time of this writing, three companies had committed to be sponsors (see
Area Companies Support Leadership Center at UTD on page 12). Mr. Hoag has
also approached four foundations for help; one, the McDermott Foundation
has already provided funds. He expects revenue will also be derived from
senior executive leadership courses, as well as from short courses
designed for mid-level managers and executives from small-to-medium-size
companies.

Both Dean Pirkul and Mr. Hoag acknowledge that the current economic
landscape presents formidable challenges for the start-up, but they
express confidence that the gambit strikes the right chord at the proper
time - a-build-it-and-they-will-come elixir at a time when
ethics-in-leadership issues have never been hotter.

"Our strength traditionally has been in quantitative studies as they
relate to management," Dean Pirkul says. "This is a new, critical area for
us that represents, in a way, the school's growth and maturity. We are
broadening our service to the local business community, and this is an
important step in that process."





"I'd like the center to put an equal focus on the 'hard side' of
leadership. We as a society tend to see leadership in terms of glory,
power and money, and a whole lot less in terms of responsibility,
accountability, strength of morals and ethics - all of which are critical
aspects of effective leadership."  -Jerry Hoag