Horses as Courses

By Bob Diddblebock / Steamboat Springs

Writer Thomas McGuane once called the alliance between horse and human "a burst of poetry." But the only thing bursting was two blisters on the inside of my left knee when our wrangler asked my partner and me to each hold an end of a belt and walk our horses side by side through a maze in the shimmering aspens high in the Rockies above Steamboat Springs, Colo. Right off, I knew this was a make-or-break moment in what experts refer to as an "experiential" course in corporate training--this one a dusty, five-day regimen crafted by Conversant, a management-training firm based in Boulder, Colo.

Indeed, the equine minuet with belt would bring into play a good many of the skills we'd learned that week, lessons about reining our horses, applying the correct kind of pressure to get the desired results, and letting the horses know when to go fast, go slow or just whoa.

Constant chatter between me and my horse--and between me and my partner--helped us ease our way through the minute adjustments, missteps and trip-ups that went into an exercise that was more a test for us than it was for our complacent cayuses. I may have looked like a rank urbanite, but we finished off the maze in short order, which probably surprised our horses more than it did us.

Complex, rocky and at times perplexing, a week's worth of horsing around at the sumptuous Home Ranch is the latest outdoor pursuit in management training. In today's corporate-training world, there are the old standbys like rock climbing, rope mazes and Dale Carnegie. But a wide variety of other programs have developed that purport to impart management wisdom: martial arts, golf (don't ask), rhythmic drumming (ditto), paintball and treasure hunts among them. Some trainers use improvisational comedy to supposedly unleash the inner Jay Leno in trainees, while other consultants bring along wild animals to scare off any doubts about promoting Smithers to GM in the Northeast office.

Nothing, however, focuses the mind, body and spirit like the prospect of winding up underneath a 1,400-lb. palomino. The lesson in cowpoking is that the whole operation relies on getting an innately stupid animal--no, not your boss, wise guy--to execute a job that's critical to the process. To get an entire herd moving, cowboys need organizational and communications skills that are, the trainees hope, readily applicable when they're home from the range. The chief financial officer of a hospitality company, for example, said he needed to "get more done more efficiently and faster, always faster." He was one of 12 men and four women, mostly in their 30s and 40s, who came from such companies as Ball Aerospace & Technologies, Hewlett-Packard and Tektronix. Someone else wanted to standardize a process at HP, a job he described as "impossible." A brilliant young entrepreneur from Massachusetts said he wanted to become a "better leader and communicator."

The group set a common goal of getting in touch with their inner manager, a serious exercise in which strawberry roans, pintos and buckskins would be broken down into mere corporate tools. "I saw one of the founders of the Home Ranch work with a wild mustang a few years ago," recalled Mickey Connolly, co-founder and CEO of Conversant, whose clients include much of the FORTUNE 500. "The techniques he used to calm fear and replace it with trust and partnership struck me as crucially important to managers and executives. Horses and cattle are ideal to work with because they give you immediate, obvious feedback when you're trying to get them to do something."

After being introduced to his or her horse--an awkward process a lot like meeting a blind date--a Conversant greenhorn leads it around the corral on a rope and conducts a few other maneuvers so they can get used to each other.

On the second day, the trail rides begin. The horses are as slow as molasses, but who would complain about a meander under snowcapped Hahn's Peak amid the golden aspens rustling in the early-autumn breeze? Work seems far away, but that morning's Zenesque classroom lessons are giving form to action. Double down on vanquishing the fear, arrogance and ignorance that can mar communication. Practice patience and a soft touch to elevate your horse's confidence in your judgment. Maintain a relaxed awareness of all around you.

The third and fourth days are a cattle call. First we push around 20 or so longhorns as a herd, and then we cut one or two dogies from the group, just as they used to do in the old western movies. Akin to separating a school of fish with a rake, cutting takes patience, balance, hard focus and a strong rapport with the horse. Not everyone gets it. Some riders want to go too fast; others fumble with the reins. But those who understand what's happening? "Using these horses is a terrific way to drive home what seems to be the essential point of the week: Give your horse all he needs to get his job done but nothing more. Then try to do less each time out," says Lou Parisi, treasurer of Dolce International in Montvale, N.J., who wouldn't let saddle-sore hips stop him from finishing out the week. "That's easy to say when dealing with humans, but training with a horse gives you a true sense of the concept."

Some experts question exactly what it is that Parisi and the thousands of others who participate in the $13.2 billion management-training industry each year get out of it. Since the forces thrashing business today--globalization, technology's swift pace, demographic shifts and consolidation--show no signs of easing, it would seem imperative that management take training seriously.

But time-pressed executives may be able to steal only a day or two away from their jobs and then pray that whatever they carry back from a program will make a difference in the office. So the question becomes, Is there long-term value in one-, two- or even five-day courses that may be nothing more than drive-bys or Band-Aids?

Probably not, says Richard Boyatzis, a professor of psychology and organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. "Most of the time, the purchase decision for these services is driven by a confused set of objectives or a decision to just do something," he says, "because the business climate is lousy or something has to be done about the company's internal culture or its markets. That leads to frenzied choices." The fruits of longer programs that set specific goals stand a much better chance of sticking with a participant, Boyatzis argues. That doesn't come cheap though. Conversant's course, featuring three weeklong sessions over eight months, costs $15,500 a head, pretty much the industry standard.

The American Management Association, a nonprofit group in New York City that sponsors management-training courses of varying lengths, says business is up. And William Silver, an associate dean of the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business, says more companies are asking him to set up customized training programs for specific issues.

Silver, who puts together Pacific Ocean sailing expeditions for high-level executives, says long-form training has changed "as the smarter companies realize there's no quick fix in developing leaders. If you want to change behavior, it has to be practiced over and over again. Then take it back to the workplace, and after that, go back for even more training."

Conversant asks each trainee to apply what she or he has learned to a current in-house project, with the goal of generating at least 10 times the return on the money the company is spending on the effort.

Difficult to accomplish? Not really, says Roger Bhalla, the director of HP's Worldwide Notebook Supply Chain Strategy and a Conversant graduate. A 40-person project to overhaul factories in six countries generated a 100-fold return on investment, he reports. Before he attended the horse program, though, "it was highly probable that the project would have stalled, based on disagreements in the team," he recalls.

At week's end, the Conversant crew knows it won't be pushing several thousand head of balky, stinky steers up the Chisholm Trail anytime soon. But the trainees have come far enough to achieve a sense of accomplishment, as well as a confidence they hope will stick even when they're buried in paperwork and Ferguson and her colleagues in accounting are screaming for new computers. "I went into the program with some trepidation," allows Kelcie Anderson, 36, a project manager with Tektronix in Beaverton, Ore., who had never been on a horse before her stay at the Home Ranch. "I was never afraid of my horse, but I didn't know how well I was going to do." After a disappointing start, Anderson learned how to corral her fears, not to mention a wayward steer. Now she'll see if she's better at keeping the strays on the job in line.