Executive Education designs customized program to match Dynegy business model

March 19, 2009 - There are many ways the Jones School’s Executive Education Department customizes a curriculum to fit a company’s needs. With Dynegy, however, the goals for participants and the organization as a whole went beyond the classroom.

Barbara Reyna, Director, Organizational Development and Learning Solutions at Dynegy, explains, “Of course we want to create better leaders, have them apply what they’ve learned, but we also need a strategy to sustain the organization’s momentum once people return to work.”

With that in mind, Executive Education worked closely with the appropriate executive team at Dynegy to develop and design three, two-day modules in High Performance Teams, Effective Leadership, and Finance and Accounting.  The programs began at the end of 2008 and will continue to run through the spring and then again in the fall of 2009. “I can’t say enough about how well it’s worked for us,” Reyna raves. “It’s a great partnership.”

The culture at Dynegy is all about teamwork. Every year, the company recognizes employees who exemplify the Guiding Principles—honesty, integrity and doing the right things with an expectation that the right things will happen.

With about 60 participants from cross-functional teams and plants across the country, the program modules build teamwork, too. “Since most of our business is in the field,” Reyna says, “Creating relationships is vital. Outside of the faculty, we’re just trying to learn from each other.”

Jones School faculty experts Brian Rountree and James Weston presented the Finance and Accounting module and Brent Smith, Associate Dean of Executive Education, taught both High Performance Teams and Effective Leadership modules.

Through its subsidiaries, Dynegy Inc. produces and sells electric energy, capacity and ancillary services in key U.S. markets. The power generation portfolio consists of more than 18,000 megawatts of baseload, intermediate and peaking power plants fueled by a mix of natural gas, coal and fuel oil. The company employs 1,900 people nationwide.

For more information, visit the Executive Education website.