European Executive Development Network

The EMEN Network aims to improve executive development at the highest levels of multi-national corporations. More specifically, its membership has four main objectives:
1. focused international benchmarking and exchange of best practices in executive development & education;
2. development of a common language and a common set of tools and concepts for Executive & Leadership Development
3. developing and maintaining an on-line Executive Course Directory with international executive courses (including the sharing of evaluation results);
4. annual projects that deliver substantial and concrete contributions to the quality of executive development policies and practices in the member companies.

Membership

The criteria by which members founded and joined EMEN, are:
• truly multi-national organisations with
• longstanding track records in executive development & education, with a
• strong drive for global best practices and sophistication in HRD, and
• represented by seasoned professionals with their own substantial track record.

Chair of the network since 1998 is Rino Schreuder.

Achievements

In the course of the years the network discussions moved from executive education to include the broader aspects of executive development and from the wider management issues to the more specific leadership issues.

From 1998 onwards, EMEN has been working towards its goals:
Re. 1. Topical issues have been discussed, like corporate universities, executive action learning, alignment of executive development with other corporate policies , management competencies, etc.; all with the distinct benefit of participants with truly relevant and comparable seniority and experiences. Many distinguished external speakers from Europe and the US shared their thoughts with the Network.
Re. 2. Early in 2004, a framework was created for a common vocabulary on Leadership Development (taxonomy). Sub-sets of this taxonomy are being discussed and detailed during meetings since then. Re. 3. An on-line database with executive course descriptions and evaluations is operational since November 1999. Apart from the EMEN-representatives, it is accessible for all managers and executives world-wide at ABN-AMRO, ABD, ASML, Philips, DSM, Corus, Nuon and Sara Lee.
Re. 4. - The Development Planning Project has been concluded in 2002.
- In 2003/2004 a joint project on Leadership Development has being carried out.
- The 2005/2006 project entails the alignment of Executive Development with other HRD activities along with a research project on Career determinants. - In 2006/2007 discussions focussed on Sustainable Executive Development.