On the other hand there definitely is demand for such a school as Insead’s Knowledge website reports. A participant of an Insead executive development programme recently challenged the business school to consider the following concept: “Your institution misses one very important programme – CEO school. Running a company is a profession just like medicine or flying an aircraft. You should train for that.” This challenged the school to find out what people who professionally manage companies think of their jobs, whether they consider it’s worth having occupational requirements for it, special curricula and even standard qualification exams.
Insead decided to talk to CEOs and managed to get input from people like Jeff Immelt of General Electric, Bob Dudley of BP and many more less known CEOs globally.
The results of Insead’s study painted the following picture of a potential CEO school:
There should be no CEO exam. None of the experts believed anyone could be qualified enough to administer such a test, nor could there be a standard “CEO curriculum”.
CEO’s jobs are very situational. The person ready to run BP most likely will fail as the CEO of a different company.
CEO jobs require life-long learning rather than standard curricula and entry exams.
Essential traits and competencies fundamental to CEO success are: Curiosity, ambition, passion, formal education (Universities’ task is developing general intelligence and such competencies as analytics, logic and systemic thinking) and on-the-job training.
Insead’s conclusion as to opening a CEO school was that business schools should at least adjust their curricula to subjects relevant to the future CEOs. These are amongst others developing vision, selecting talent, enabling performance, managing in crisis, communicating with the whole organisation, personal discipline and efficacy, preparing legacy, managing succession, and how to learn and unlearn at all stages of one’s career.
http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/can-you-learn-to-be-a-ceo-3570