T H E C H A L L E N G E

Based in Monterrey, Mexico, ALFA is a global holding company that manages a portfolio of highly diversified subsidiaries. Sigma is a major multinational refrigerated food company. Alpek is one of the world’s largest producers of polyester. Nemak is a leading provider of innovative light-weighting solutions for the automotive industry. Axtel is an IT and communications provider in Mexico.

While the subsidiary companies are in very different fields, they all rely on specialized technical expertise to drive the organization’s success in each industry. ALFA’s talent development leaders recognized that the people responsible for the competitive advantage of each company—through innovation, R&D, operations efficiency—didn’t typically get the training they needed to become effective business leaders.

“In companies like ours, technical experts are responsible for our core capabilities, which are extremely important for the solutions that we provide to our customers, the value we create for them,” says Ernesto Gomez, VP, Human Capital at ALFA. “We needed to take better care of the people who are creating those capabilities on a daily basis and make sure that they can play a broader, more strategic role, and help us deliver even greater value for our customers.”

ALFA

DEVELOPING TECHNICAL EXPERTS INTO EFFECTIVE BUSINESS LEADERS

T H E S O LU T I O N

The ALFA Leadership, Technology and Business Acumen program brings together groups of about 35 executives from across all business units for two week-long sessions on the MIT campus and a final two-day session at the ALFA headquarters in Monterrey in the span of nine months. The MIT weeks are filled with presentations by and exercises with senior faculty. The Monterrey session features team presentations to the company’s senior leadership.

ALFA’s diverse portfolio of businesses poses an interesting challenge of making the classroom content relevant and useful for all participants. “In a typical custom program, we bring in examples from the company and its industry. But here, it’s essentially four different companies and four different industries,” explains Dr. Steven Eppinger, program Faculty Director, Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems at MIT Sloan. “So, in this context, we teach a theory or an idea that’s quite generalizable and can be applied in all kinds of different businesses. Then, very deliberately, we work through specific applications for each of ALFA’s industry sectors.”

“That’s an explicit part of the design,” points out Court Chilton, Program Director, Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan. The program curriculum combines content on leadership, technology and finance topics, strategy, and gener-al management, but it’s “the mix that’s really important,” says Chilton. “We switch from one to the other and we integrate all, so that the participants see the connections between these topics and how they affect their work. We have a wide variety of faculty members involved. Not everybody teach-es the same way, but they all have this Mind and Hand MIT approach.”

“This framed way of teaching really makes a difference,” says Homero Garza, Talent Manager Director at ALFA. “There are many ways to struc-ture learning, and MIT’s approach of offering these nuggets of knowledge expressed in very simple terms makes it easy to grasp and easy to imple-ment. It’s very practical and applicable in the real world.”

“It’s not just another leadership program,” says Gomez. “Each session is aligned with the content that’s been delivered, building on the participants’ knowledge. And let me tell you, this is a challenging program! It’s a long day, non-stop. It demands effort from the participants. But they are react-

C U S TO M PR O G R A M SU CC E S S S TO RYF O C U S : B U S I N E S S AC U M E N , T E C H N O LO G Y & L E A D E R S H I P C A PA B I L I T Y D E V E LO P M E N T / N E T W O R K I N G

I N D U S T R Y: F O O D / P L A S T I C S / AU TO M OT I V E / T E L E CO M M U N I C AT I O N S

ing beautifully. They really engage and they appreciate what they are getting.”

Classroom sessions are highly interactive and immer-sive: a flat classroom plan ensures that both faculty and participants are on the same level; table assignments change every day to encourage conversation and net-working among small groups. To help participants review and reflect on what they’ve learned, a skilled graphic facilitator captures the most salient points from each session on large white boards in real time. These color-ful summaries are then put into a presentation with a voice-over narration and shared with participants after each class. In the evenings, people have a chance to get to know each other better during informal dinners and cultural outings.

Yet, the most critical part of the program takes place between classroom modules, during the active learning phase, when teams work on projects carefully selected by the participants to focus on current issues specific to individual ALFA business units. Action-learning proj-ects are a cornerstone of MIT Sloan Executive Educa-tion teaching—they let participants apply what they’ve learned in our classrooms to immediate business chal-lenges, with the support from their program peers and guidance by MIT faculty. “The project-based learning is a very relevant piece for us,” says Garza. “I am not exag-gerating when I say that the value these projects create pays for the tuition and the cost of the program.”

T H E R E S U LT

Each program year, small groups of participants orga-nized by specific businesses within ALFA brainstorm a wide range of topics relevant to them. Then, with guidance from MIT faculty and Executive Education program staff, each group begins work on two projects per business line—two from Nemak, two from Alpek, two from Axtel, and two from Sigma—which address current business challenges within each company. “The projects have achieved remarkable results, because they picked some tough, important problems,” says Dr. Eppinger. Over the years, projects have focused on increasing operational efficiencies or capacity, generating greater sales, or saving significant amounts of money and waste by rethinking operations and business processes.

A team from Axtel found a way to reduce redundancies in its networks following a merger with another telecom provider, which led to a million-dollar annual savings in operational expenses. Alpek’s re-sequencing of process operations led to significant time-savings, which, for Alpek, translates to greater production capacity. Sigma discovered a surprising way to increase production: when technological solutions are not enough, involve the peo-ple who actually make your product by hand and watch throughput go up in volume and quality. An international team from Nemak applied Dr. Eppinger’s framework for organizing engineering processes to implement major R&D process improvements and standardize its practic-es across different countries, making the company more competitive in the global marketplace.

Noe Garcia is a Plant Operations Manager at AKRA Poly-ester, a division of Alpek. Garcia’s project team worked on an issue at the polymer plant affecting product quali-ty. “We did a deep analysis using the methodology given by Steve [Eppinger] and we generated some control strategies that, at the end of 2016, let us achieve almost 1 million dollars in non-performance-product reduction,” he recalls. “It was very significant and we are maintain-ing the usage of this methodology.”

Glenn Byczynski, Research and Development Manager for the U.S. and Canada, Nemak, describes his group’s project that led to the development of a new R&D man-agement system for the company. “We had lots of ideas from all over the world coming in and no objective way to rank them and to select which ones to work on and prioritize. The system was overloaded, and resources were stretched thin. But with the insights from the MIT program, we were able to put together a process for an R&D selection tool that we still use today. The outcome of the project was successful; it filled an immediate need, and now we have a more efficient R&D process.”

The tangible, measurable outcomes from team projects are rewarding indeed, but the benefits of the program extend far beyond hard data points. Being exposed to general management and leadership topics, learning from peers from different ALFA companies, developing relationships within their own business units, having access to world-class research—all add to an enriching learning experience for the participants.

SOLUTION

An educational experience that blends technical and general-management topics in a curriculum designed to address the company’s specific needs and offers opportunities to apply the knowledge immediately through action-learning projects, with guidance and support from MIT faculty.

RESULT

A growing number of technical leaders in each ALFA company now have the management savvy and leadership skills needed to ensure optimal performance of their teams, as well as a common language and a strong global network of peers across all business units.

CHALLENGE

To maintain its market leadership position in a variety of highly competitive industries, ALFA, a global holding company, needed to equip its technical experts with the leadership capabilities and business acumen to become more effective leaders.

C U S TO M

P R O G R A M

S N A P S H OT:

A L FA

To inquire about developinga custom program for your

organization, contact ourcustom programs team at:

Hector Larraga, Director of a Sigma dairy plant, notes that focusing too closely on the technical aspect of the job can sometimes lead to overlooking the role of the people doing the work, “the human side of innovation,” as he calls it.

“Going to a program like that helps you to remember that,” he says. “Paying attention to the human side of innovation is how you become a leader, not just a doer.”

Iván de la Peña, Technological Development Director at ALFA-Energía, a division of Alpek, is applying the soft skills he gained in the program to engage colleagues. “I started to apply some of the techniques that we observed here, like how to handle a portfolio of projects and how to involve more people, more stakeholders in the projects. Even if they are not completely involved in the project, they will enrich the project mission and provide a different point of view that, in the end, will help me generate better projects. This human-focused thinking, how to influence people (in an ethical way, of course) to get responses that will allow you to improve your work is something that I never saw before,” he says. “I’ve been in the business for a long time and noticed some of these things over the years, but I never re-alized that you can analyze them in a methodological way.”

For John Oladele, Plant Manager, Director of Operations (Pearl River), at Alpek Polyester, understanding human psy-chology is critical to the safety of his staff and operations.

“Working at the chemical plant can be very repetitive and boring. People stop paying attention, which is extremely dangerous,” he says. “This program helped me understand the science behind human behavior, so, as a manager, I can help my people stay vigilant and safe.”

Carlos Peraza Zazueta, Legal Director at Axtel, sees the lessons from Dr. Roberto Fernandez, Professor of Work and Organization Studies, transcending work. “He makes you think about real life, how to treat people, how to interact with people in groups—it’s amazing. When you listen to him, you realize that some things were in your head, but you don’t use them in the way that you should, and you should do something about that. This program teaches you how to

think differently and understand human irrationality at the same time that you understand processes to accomplish goals.”

Access to MIT faculty plays an important role in the overall learning experience. “It certainly opens our eyes to all this knowledge and experience and tools,” says Silvia Zavala, Logistics and Customer Service Manager at Alpek-Ter-za. “It’s one thing to read an article in a business journal on your lunch break in your office, but here we actually meet the people who write those articles. They share their thinking with us, and we can apply all that directly to our jobs. For me, to be able to discuss whatever issues I have at work with an MIT professor—it’s mind-blowing!”

Like many other participants, Adriana Patricia Garza Cas-tillo, Billing Manager at Axtel, has been with the company for decades. She echoes her colleagues in pointing out the importance of learning from peers, both within an individu-al company and across the ALFA Group. “We never get the chance to meet people from other companies. Their ex-perience may be similar, but we are in different segments, sectors, so it’s interesting, because you learn about them, the problems they have, which may be similar to yours, but they solve them in different ways.”

Rodolfo Garza, Director Research and Development for Bar-S Foods, a Sigma division in the U.S., sees how a shared learning experience contributes to developing a common language across the organization. “In this cohort, there are three people from my company: a plant manag-er, somebody from purchasing, and me from R&D. I can already see the impact of this network—you get better sup-port for your projects, better communication, better under-standing just by having these three people understand the same ideas in the same way,” he says. He hopes that ALFA continues to offer this program to more and more people,

“so that more people hear the same message and develop the same language.”

MIT Sloan School of Management Office of Executive Education

One Main St., 9th Flr., E90 Cambridge, MA 02142

P H O N E : +1 617 253 7166E M A I L : execed_custom@mit.edu

E X E C U T I V E . M I T. E D U/C U S T O M P R O G R A M S

To inquire about developinga custom program for your

organization, contact ourcustom programs team at:

Information accurate as of 2018

“YOU CAN SEE A SPARK IN OUR PEOPLE’S EYES

BECAUSE THEY HAVE FOUND WHAT THEY

NEED TO MAKE THEIR TEAMS BETTER OR THEIR LEADERSHIP

SKILLS BETTER.”

ERNESTO GOMEZ,VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN CAPITAL,

ALFA

E X E C U T I V E . M I T. E D U/A L FA

W H Y M I T

MIT’s renown as the top school for technical experts was the main reason for initiating contact, but meeting MIT Sloan Executive Education program designers and faculty made ALFA realize that they’ve come to right place for the “soft-skills” expertise, as well. “We went in with a bit of a stereotype of MIT being this hyper-technical, super data-driven, science-based aca-demic institution, so the fit with the technical experts was kind of obvious. But then we discovered that MIT is an amazing institution also for teaching leaders and managers, the softer side,” recalls Garza.

From the beginning of the relationship, Garza and Gomez saw an alignment between their management education goals and the learning design at MIT Sloan Executive Education. “Having a project as the epicenter of the learning experience adds real, tangible value for our company,” says Garza.

“We haven’t seen that at other universities, or at least, not featured as prominently.”

MIT’s practical way of teaching resonates with ALFA. “When you come here, you understand that the faculty and the community really live the essence of what the institution is all about. And in our case, our colleagues have the opportunity to experience that in the classroom,” says Gomez. “The Mens et Manus [mind and hand] approach is very problem-driven. You find a problem and then you go ahead and solve it. Sounds simple, but our col-leagues can relate to this approach—our job is not to complete tasks; our job is to solve problems.”

Beyond the classroom, the MIT ecosystem plays a significant role in ALFA’s continuing commitment to this program. Access to MIT’s research centers and labs, to the vibrant entrepreneurship community on and around cam-pus, contributes to a richer education experience for the company. “This is unique to MIT,” says Gomez. “You cannot find it elsewhere.”