Bjorn Billhardt - The 12-Week MBA

What is the secret to turning good managers into great leaders? In our latest episode, we sit down with Bjorn Billhardt, CEO of Abilitie and co-author of "The 12-Week MBA," to uncover the answer. We delve into his passion for technology, education, and entertainment, which led him to pioneer interactive simulations that revolutionize corporate training. 

Click HERE to connect with Bjorn on LinkedIn
Click HERE for Abilitie's website
Click HERE to purchase Bjorn's book The 12-Week MBA

Other related episodes:

• The Hero and the Guide

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Transcript

John Broer: 0:05

All right, everybody, welcome back to the Bossh ole Chronicles. Good to have you here. And guess who's joining me? As always, my amazing, wonderful partner, Sara Best. What's up Sara, how you doing?

Sara Best: 0:15

Hey, J ohn, I'm good. This is a real good episode. We're doing real good. It's good to be back in the studio together.

John Broer: 0:22

Yeah, yeah. Well, this is. You just seem to be lining up some real powerful guests, Sara. Subject matter expert episode today who's joining us?

Sara Best: 0:45

Our guest today is the CEO of Abilitie and he's co-author of a great book called " The 12-Week MBA. His name is Bjorn Billhardt, fascinating guy, fascinating interview. He was born in Germany. He came over as an exchange student. He has a host of amazing credentials, but his passion is really for developing business management and leadership skills and he's been focused on that for more than two decades. He hails from Austin, Texas. Currently. He hails from Austin, Texas currently. Abilitie, h is company was started in 2015.

Sara Best: 1:10

But I will say what I love about our conversation with Bjorn today is making available and practical the insight and the knowledge that managers need to have to lead in today's world. So this idea of an MBA program it's a two-year program. Typically it's quite expensive, it's not easily accessible by most people and actually Bjorn talks about the statistics of who gets this kind of education compared to the number of managers there really are and need this education. So the 12-week MBA is, in fact, an affordable, very doable virtual program with a beautiful curriculum that we'll dig into with Bjorn. So what do you say?

Sara Best: 1:52

Let's dig in John, I say we go. Let's meet Bjorn.

John Broer: 1:58

The Bossh ole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Sara Best: 2:21

Bjorn, welcome to the Bossh ole Chronicles. It is delightful to have you here today.

Bjorn Billhardt: 2:26

Great p Pleasure to be here.

Sara Best: 2:27

Thank you. We came across you and your work compliments of Mike Zani, who's the CEO of the Predictive Index and a classmate of yours, a business school classmate of yours and a friend but he posted about your work in particular a book called " the 12-Week MBA". We'll get to that part in a minute, I think. First, our listeners would love to know a little bit about you and your story and how you arrived at developing such a passion for people and leader development.

Bjorn Billhardt: 2:56

Wonderful, yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast, and Mike's a great friend and just a fantastic CEO as well. So my story is I grew up you may hear a little bit of an accent, and you may also look at my name and know that I'm not from the United States. I grew up in Hamburg, G germany, and I came to Austin, T texas, as an exchange student in high school, actually more accurately, Pflugerville, T texas. Spent a year as an exchange student in Pflugerville and then fell in love with the United States, fell in love with Austin as a city and decided that I wanted to make a living here. I didn't know exactly back in the day what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to be here. So then I enrolled as an undergrad at the University of Texas and Austin actually got a liberal arts degree there. I went to become a consultant for two years and then went to business school. In my second year in business school I thought I needed to get serious about what I wanted to do with my life, and so I did a few experiments, first with myself, really looking inward and trying to figure out what am I passionate about. And so I had these three things that I really was passionate about and still passionate about, and number one is new technologies. I absolutely love working is new technologies. And then the second is education. As part of my consulting my two years in consulting I had the pleasure to be a teacher in front of a classroom and that was really the favorite part of my job for those two years, and so I realized that teaching and education really is a passion of mine. And then the third passion actually was entertainment, and so I tried to figure out what I can do, that's at the intersection of technology, education and entertainment. At the time that I was thinking about what to do, one of our professors in business school take the entire class into the gym and dumped a bunch of Legos on the floor and then put a stopwatch next to each team and had us build Lego castles using gameplay to illustrate some important concepts of supply chain management and logistics. And I was absolutely hooked with this idea that you can use interactivity and competitive gameplay and simulations to create better educational experiences. That was sort of the start in 2001. After I graduated from business school, I started my first company in the edtech space called Inspiral Learning, and we developed interactive simulations for large companies in all sorts of topic areas and over time, we realized that the areas that, when we talked to the business leaders that were in highest demand that you know business leaders were like this is what we really need people to know and do all centered on some form of leadership education. New manager training was at the top of everyone's list because, as you probably know better than me, ineffective managers are the number one reason why people leave their job. That contributes to highest turnover and all those types of things. So we experimented around with that. I started my first company, had that for 15 years, sold it in 2015, and then started Abilitie as a leadership development company and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about our products, but that's sort of been my journey. And also, obviously, I moved back from Boston, where I had gotten my MBA, back to Austin. I've been growing my two companies here in Austin, T texas, since 2001.

Sara Best: 6:18

Wow, that's fascinating, and I love this idea of entertainment, teaching and new technology and bringing those together to create experiential learning in a whole new way. That's powerful. With Abilitie, your entire platform is available to everybody and you've actually curated content. I want you to tell us how this all happened, but your new book is called the " 12-Week MBA, and you also offer this through Ability. Yeah, so give us the lowdown about what was the impetus for making this available and what kind of results are you seeing?

Bjorn Billhardt: 6:54

Yeah, great question. We did things backward. Actually, most of the books that come out is when someone decides they're an expert in the field and then they put their thoughts together and write a book and then, after the book comes out, they start to think about well, can we create a curriculum around it and can we teach it to people in a more in-depth way than a book? We actually did it the opposite way and I think it's really, in my mind, the right way to do it. We first worked with many large Fortune 500 companies and we developed their leadership development programs. We sat in the seats with the CEOs of very large companies, the head of the GE Aviation Unit, many other Fortune 500 companies that were clients of ours. We heard those leaders express their frustrations with what they think their frontline managers, their team leaders, need to know and don't know, and based on that, we developed the curricula for these companies. Then we consolidated. At some point we realized that there were some common elements to all of those requests that we got from our clients, and so that's when we started building our intellectual property in creating these meaningful leadership development programs in different areas at first. First it was kind of separate programs in business acumen, then programs in how to lead and manage people, then it was programs in effective decision-making. And then we realized that, as we were assembling all these programs that we actually had on our hands, it really affected mini MBA and at that point we created first the program, the 12-week MBA, refined it over time and then we said now let's put what we've learned in a book. So we feel actually we did it a little bit. You know we did it very differently, but in my mind, I think, also creates a much richer book in terms of all of the lessons that we've learned over the years working with large companies to try to figure out, you know, what is it that managers and leaders really need to know on the job. And a two year MBA, because a lot of people rightfully ask can you actually teach an MBA in 12 weeks in a part-time, virtual Tthen? Right, like I mean, at most this is equivalent of, you know, three graduate school hours, not a full MBA. And we're not selling it as an MBA, it's a mini MBA, it's a certificate program, and very deliberately so. When we looked at what actually is inside a two-year MBA, right, when you peel back the onion, it's like and all you needed to do was how to count the various widgets and factories. Nowadays, businesses are so diverse, they're. So global Marketplaces are so different that it's almost impossible to teach everything. So what business schools have done and rightfully so they've diversified from just teaching production management and accounting to teaching supply chain management in Indonesia and social media marketing for podcast producers all really interesting. But because we've, as professionals, have to specialize, the knowledge that you gain is not necessarily that relevant to you, right? So if you're social media marketing for a podcast company, you don't necessarily need to know about some supply chain issues that are happening in Indonesia. It's interesting and it does help hone your skills.

Bjorn Billhardt: 10:43

And if you have the time and you have the money to spend on a two-year MBA, absolutely. I would do mine again in a heartbeat. And if you get into a top 20 MBA school, absolutely do it. But for us, what we realized was that all that functional knowledge and all that industry knowledge that you gain in the two-year MBA, you can learn. And all that industry knowledge that you gain in the two-year MBA you can learn maybe not better, but similarly on the job. And then what you're left with are the universal and timeless elements of the MBA, and that's just identified. The three universal timeless elements are the numbers understanding how businesses create value, how to manage people and then how to make better decisions.

Sara Best: 11:25

I hear you not knocking traditional MBA programs. In fact, they're amazing. You support them. However, we know that they're not accessible to everyone and they're not affordable for everyone. Yet companies still need to upskill and develop their people leaders and develop the business savvy of their people, so this is one powerful way to do this.

John Broer: 11:48

I seem to remember Mike Zani saying, you know as wonderful as his experience was with the Harvard MBA. He was really surprised that the focus on the people you know he's in the world of behavioral analytics now with Predictive Index, but that there wasn't as great an emphasis or hasn't traditionally been that kind of emphasis. And, Bjorn, as you said, when you got to experience or you had that experiential experience Lego event, if you will in the gymnasium, that made additional connections that traditional education perhaps missed. And again, your book, your course, puts it in somebody's daily activities where they can make those connections through every single week. That's incredibly powerful. That is literally learning on the job, yeah, and it's exactly.

Bjorn Billhardt: 12:38

I very much agree with Mike on the job. Yeah, and it's exactly I very much agree with with Mike. You know we had, we had a wonderful two year experience in RMS really high quality and I would never. I would never replace it in a million years. But we did not learn that much about how to manage people. That was, it was a course on lead, which was interesting, but it wasn't. The majority of the classes were then and I think still in most MBAs still are focused on some of the harder skills. You know the finance, accounting logistics, because that's much easier to teach. It's actually a lot harder to teach how to become a great manager and many academics, through no fault of their own, have never actually managed people. h And so it's hard to find the right faculty also that kind of really has an understanding of how difficult it can be sometimes to actually manage people. So I very much agree with Mike. I loved my two years when I got my MBA and then when I started hiring people and became a manager, I made horrific mistakes in my first few years horrific mistakes.

Bjorn Billhardt: 13:39

It was like why, did.

Bjorn Billhardt: 13:40

No one teach me this.

John Broer: 13:42

Right, right, and it seems like your experience after that have been very similar in saying I have this amazing education and when you couple that with this robust people, knowledge and analytics, it's transformative. It really is.

Bjorn Billhardt: 13:59

Yeah, yeah, and Sara, you made a really, really good point earlier as well. It's like the people that can go through an MBA. Wonderful for them, right? But the numbers are that there are currently, I think, 150,000 MBAs that graduate each year, and there are over a million new management positions. So what that means is that close to 90% of the management positions are going to be filled with people that don't have an MBA and, many times, don't have any formal business background, that have never been taught what it means to motivate others, hold a difficult performance conversation, those types of things and also have never learned the very basics of what creates value in a company. And so that's when you find these deer in the headlight moments and ultimately managers that become the type of managers I think that you have some issues with.

John Broer: 14:55

Boss hole avoidance is what we call it. Yeah, that's right.

Sara Best: 14:58

Yes, yes, I love that you marry together the people component, you emphasize that, you amplify that people leadership component, not just for MBA, many MBA people, but you also have a manager training program, a very specific one becoming an effective manager, where again it's it's emphasizing the people component. An effective manager where again it's emphasizing the people component.

John Broer: 15:27

John had asked a question beforehand like hey, john, maybe you want to ask that question now.

John Broer: 15:29

Well, and I just want to remind our listeners everything that we're talking about here the book abilities website, information on Bjorn it's in the show notes. I mean, you go there and connect with this amazing resource. But what I really liked about the program Bjorn as I was reading about it, I know it's built in three modules self-awareness, people management and people leadership I think it's fascinating that you make the distinction between people management and people leadership, because there is a difference. We talk about that. Can we talk a little bit more about self-awareness? Because we are all about, I would say, in all of our leadership work and our management coaching or leadership coaching self-awareness is number one. That is foundational. Self-awareness is the number one competency to be an effective manager or leader. What's your methodology or approach to help people develop that self-awareness as a foundation for being a better manager?

Bjorn Billhardt: 16:22

Develop that self-awareness as a foundation for being a better manager? It's a great question. And, by the way, also becoming an effective manager program. That entire curriculum is also part of the 12-week MBA. So the 12-week MBA encompasses all of our shorter programs and the effective manager program really is that component for new managers that have the steer and a headlight moment. What do I do now that I'm not? And, John, you're absolutely right, self-awareness is the number one key and that's why the traditional saying is to become a manager, to become a leader. Emotional intelligence ultimately kind of trumps the IQ intelligence, Because ultimately it's no longer Once you become a manager and once you become a leader. It's no longer once you become a manager and once you become a leader, it's no longer your work product, it's all about the work product of the people that work for you, and so you actually lose. One of the things we talk about in the book that I think is really resonated is that you have to come to grips not with the power that you gain when you become a manager, but with all of the power that you lose.

Sara Best: 17:22

Yes, yes, oh, that's so good.

Bjorn Billhardt: 17:25

I think that's a concept that's really strange to people right that are new to management is that all of a sudden, they have lost all this power right Previously, as an individual contributor, it was your work product and you could control the quality you were in charge, and when you're a manager and you think that you can apply the same things, you become that manager that people hate to work for. You become the micromanager, you become the manager that ultimately isn't getting the job done, and so self-awareness is at the key of understanding how you're being perceived by others, so that you can effectively communicate with them, because you're no longer going to be able to rely on your work product. You still have to rely on your judgment.

Bjorn Billhardt: 18:09

That will never go away and you still have to judge, but you can no longer work as a manager and self-awareness is key. Self-awareness is key, so we use um we actually for our clients. We're agnostic to different, to different tools of creating that, that self-awareness. I know mike's predictive index is actually an amazing tool often used in the hiring process. So, like plugging, plugging, the predictive index is really, really great. We typically work with our large fortune 500 clients to figure out what the right tool is for them, because a lot of times you know people already have, you know, the Myers-Briggs or the DISC kind of tool.

Bjorn Billhardt: 18:47

But what we do then is we connect the dots between what someone's personality styles because that's not enough Like what someone's personality style is too. Now, what does that mean in terms of how you show up as a manager? Is to. Now, what does that mean in terms of how you show up as a manager? And, even more important, you know, one of the big mistakes we talk about this in the book quite a bit is that what you think when you become a manager is that everyone that works on your team is motivated by the same things that you're motivated by right, and that is patently false.

Bjorn Billhardt: 19:16

And that's where so much friction starts to happen, when, when you're like but wouldn't they be motivated by what motivated me? Now you're trying to figure out. Well, why are they not that motivated and you're not understanding that they're motivated by different things? So self-awareness of your own you know your strengths and weaknesses, but also your personality style and then self-awareness of the strengths and weaknesses and the personality style and, most importantly, the motivations of everyone on your team is the basic building block that we talk about in our Effective Manager program.

John Broer: 19:49

I think it's interesting. For the last couple of years, bjorn, a lot of our speaking engagements around the country have been the topic or a theme that was very popular was reinventing the manager, because we believe in COVID just helped to codify it. I think that it is long overdue for a different management approach. Principles and practices aside, there's a disposition that we believe today's manager needs to have to developing other people, cause, as you said, it's the control or the power that you lose and you now become the guide. You're no longer the hero.

John Broer: 20:25

We did an episode a couple of years ago. The hero and the guide talking about the hero was Luke Skywalker. The guide was Obi-Wan or Yoda Sorry to use the Star Wars, but you know what I mean. You're no longer the hero, you are the guide, and we believe that takes a different type of person, especially with the different type of workplace. I mean that reinventing the manager has now shifted to reinventing the workplace. You've been in business long enough. How are you seeing this transformation or how the role of a manager has evolved to what the workforce needs now?

Bjorn Billhardt: 20:59

Yeah, I absolutely love that analogy and I absolutely love how you're framing this idea of why being a manager is so different than being an individual contributor. What we've seen in the last 24 years, now that we've talked with executives but actually honestly, even more so and far more pronounced since the pandemic is, executives talk about this enormous skills gap in all these areas. Even more so and far more pronounced since the pandemic is, you know, executives talk about this enormous skills gap in all these areas. The skills gap between being an individual contributor and being a manager consistently has come up as the biggest skills gap that needs to be filled by learning and development programs. And that's kind of consistently what we've heard from executives. It's like the difference between being good at your job as an individual contributor and being good managing others.

Bjorn Billhardt: 21:51

That skills gap is enormous and you know again, mbas can't build it on their own and that's why I think you see a lot of the universities kind of come up with shorter form programs as well. That's why you see a lot of the universities kind of come up with shorter form programs as well. That's why you see a lot of corporations invest in their leadership programs for their employees. So we see a lot of movement in the area of companies realizing that that skills gap is very large and needs to be filled, and cannot be filled by sending people back to school for two years.

Sara Best: 22:25

Yes, I think, one of the jewels that you highlighted just a moment or two ago. This is no longer about your work product. I just have to double click on that for a second. I was in Austin last week, actually at a conference, and I met the most vibrant, energetic CHRO of an energy company. She was amazing but struggled.

Sara Best: 22:46

I hope she's going to be listening to this because I don't think she could understand that her struggle, her need to keep doing, doing, doing was exactly because she did not want to give up control of the work product. So the question I want to ask and just in understanding, there are many people out there, leaders, who don't know that they're struggling with that. They really believe it is their responsibility because it's going to come down on them my boss is going to, it'll be my fault if this doesn't go well and any other variety of things they say. But what about the people who are wired for that kind of perfectionistic, about the people who are wired for that kind of perfectionistic got to have this done exactly the right way. Are they coachable? Can we develop their capabilities in giving away the power and better understanding how to elevate others?

Bjorn Billhardt: 23:34

That's a wonderful question. If I actually had the answer to that, I could retire now, yeah, and by the way, also my, my strong guess is that you went to Eugene's Culturati conference. Is that? Is that?

Sara Best: 23:48

right? No, actually it was the work human live conference.

Bjorn Billhardt: 23:51

Oh wow, so many conferences.

Sara Best: 23:53

Yeah.

Bjorn Billhardt: 23:53

I was. I was going to put a plug in for the Culturati conference because it's been a it's an amazing conference here in Austin.

Sara Best: 23:59

We should know about that too.

Bjorn Billhardt: 24:01

Yes, many, many places to go. It's a really good question.

Sara Best: 24:05

Yeah, is there hope?

Bjorn Billhardt: 24:06

Well, and I think there, I mean I think there is this is not an either or it's a sliding scale, right, and it's their gradients, right. And I think it's incumbent on the leaders of each company to make people understand that what being a manager means, and that it means something different than just being exceptional at your job and perfectionist at it right, and I think that is that is the leader that is actually, you know, management leadership. We talked about this a second ago and talk for a whole nother podcast on what the difference is. But I think the you, the leaders in a company, do set that tone. And if that tone is set, then I think there are people that can be coached to understand the importance of giving effective feedback.

Bjorn Billhardt: 24:52

And with effective feedback, I always say like I don't need nice feedback. Effective feedback is both kind but also clear. Sometimes feedback can be difficult to hear. Giving new managers an understanding that their job is radically different when they step into that role, that they have to learn a whole new set of skill sets that they may not be nearly as successful at at the beginning than when they were an individual contributor, I think is the first step in transforming some people there will always be, I think, people who will not have the mindset, the growth mindset, to be able to make that jump, and I think that's where we see some of the train wrecks that are happening in this world.

John Broer: 25:36

Oh yeah, and there's a lot of them. There is a lot of them unfortunately, but I am.

Bjorn Billhardt: 25:42

I'm a firm believer in growth mindset and I'm a firm believer in coachable moments. And I do think with I mean I'm in training and development. So I'm believing in the power of training and development to transform people. You know, not everyone, but enough people to make the world a better place.

John Broer: 26:01

Well, if I can dovetail on that, I think that's when we have clients who the executive leadership. They have a growth mindset and realizing that, even though they came up through more of a command and control management methodology or philosophy, realizing that we talk about command and control versus trust and autonomy and it's a continuum. But people that are rooted in the command and control oftentimes managers find themselves in the boss hole zone because they don't understand how do I develop people and give them the autonomy and trust that I have equipped them and trained them to do the work that they need to do? When that mindset changes, organizations transform. You've seen it. You've seen it in your clients, we've seen it at ours. That's exciting and that's the kind of stuff we love to do.

Bjorn Billhardt: 26:50

If I could add one more thing, no discussion these days is complete without mentioning AI.

Sara Best: 26:55

I had it on my list. Good, good, go there.

Bjorn Billhardt: 27:02

So I mean, there are all sorts of problems and you know doomsday scenarios in AI, but there's actually one really interesting component where AI may actually be incredibly helpful in this transition for people from individual contributor manager, and I'll give you the example of what we're doing right now.

Bjorn Billhardt: 27:15

You know, previously you were able to kind of test IQ with a bunch of multiple choice questions.

Bjorn Billhardt: 27:23

It was really really hard to actually get to understanding how someone would act and interact with others, even in an interview.

Bjorn Billhardt: 27:31

A lot of the ultimate tendencies that people tend to show as managers can be hidden right, and so you find out, and so there was no way to really either test or assess, but also no way to really train people in an effective way on these software skills and I will say the experiment. So in our becoming an effective manager program now we have embedded AI characters in our simulated scenarios and it's still early stage, but it is phenomenal what we see in terms of the ability for people to interact with a fictitious AI driven character but being able to dissect a conversation and dissect where conversation may have gone off the rails, where it may have gone wrong, and then have you know, kind of humans ultimately evaluate that interaction with an AI character that gives you responses. We've seen enormously promising very early stage but enormously promising results in terms of the ability for people to hone their skills. And that human interaction is really ironic because there's all sorts of stuff you can say about AI, you know, and how it's dehumanizing things, but here is actually someone helping.

Sara Best: 28:46

I love that story. That's powerful AI. Actually, Bjorn was on my list. I knew there would be an interface for you. I knew there'd be savvy around your education program and the use of AI, so thank you for highlighting that. What's next for you? What's on the horizon?

Bjorn Billhardt: 29:00

You know that's a great question. So we have mainly worked with Fortune 500 companies and if you go to our website you see a roster of all these very large companies.

Bjorn Billhardt: 29:08

Yes, so which is, you know, I'm really proud of that I go ultimately into my grave, and I'm sure this will be recorded by some AI, but this quote will come back to me If I ultimately go into my grave and, having helped mostly Fortune 500 companies, I think I will have missed an opportunity to truly have an impact on this world, and so some of the things that are happening on our programs that I'm personally most excited about. We make no money on them right now and I don't know if we'll ever will, but we have some people joining us from the African continent, which is a continent that is very much in motion and very much a continent that is starting to wake up to their global potential.

Bjorn Billhardt: 29:53

Yes, and those people have difficult internet connections, difficult times connecting at times, and yet they are so hungry for knowledge, so ready to learn, so willing to do whatever it takes, so willing to ultimately our program. It's under $2,000, which is really not expensive for you in the US, but it is expensive when you live in rural Africa. But we have literally people you know, put together some significant savings to participate and we do give out scholarships as well in those areas. That's been in my mind while it's been a very small part of our business, the thing that if I can spend the next 10 years creating leaders and managers, not just here in the US but around the world, from people that actually is to your earlier point. It's like can all people learn to become managers? The answer is probably.

Bjorn Billhardt: 30:50

You know, there's probably a limit to the number of great managers there are, in my mind, many of the people that could be great managers don't even know that they could be effective in business. And if the 12-week MBA can get some of those people that may have never taken a business course, that may have never thought of themselves as a leader, if that book, if the program that we run, can inspire some of these people to say well, maybe I am not that bad at it because I understand people. I, you know, listen to others. I have some of the qualities that actually make for a good manager. If we can make a dent by inspiring some folks that may not have ever thought of becoming a manager, become a manager, I do think we will make. We will have made the world a better place. That's awesome.

Sara Best: 31:39

I agree. I think that's a powerful note to end on and it is possible. Yes, we can. Yes, you are. You are doing that, so continue your great work. Maybe we'll get to catch up with you again down the road. So grateful, though, to have had you as our guest today and, as we mentioned, all this good stuff will be in the show notes for people. Bjorn, thank you and good luck to you as you continue forward.

Bjorn Billhardt: 32:00

Thank you both for having me on the show.

John Broer: 32:05

Thanks very much, bjorn, and we'll see you next time on the Bossh ole Chronicles. We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bossh ole Chronicles and if you have a Bossh ole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles. com. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles. com. We'll see you again soon.