From our discussions with companies and clients, both domestic and global, we repeatedly hear several key themes. For example:

1. How do we grow our top line while keeping an eye on our profitability?
2. How do we convert our corporate culture of manufacturing and offering "products" to developing and selling "customer solutions"?
3. How can we help our key senior managers become better leaders, and how can we better develop leadership capability in our base of high-potential managers?

To help our partners and custom clients address these issues, Olin Business School has designed a set of Critical Platforms that enable companies to launch and follow through with internal strategic initiatives that will encourage growth and improve performance in today's business environment. These platforms are the foundation of many of our Custom Executive Programs. They are designed to cover key management development issues in an integrated way to help your organization drive results.

Platforms are revised on a continual basis. Currently, we employ the following:

Growth Engine : This platform tackles the difficult issues of balancing investments to grow revenue streams with the natural tendencies of organizations to drive cost effectiveness and profitability. Thus, we examine the underpinnings, processes and frameworks of driving profitable growth across a broad range of businesses and industrial settings.

Customer Focus : Customer focus goes beyond exceptional marketing. Rather, it's a general management activity that starts when the entire organization steps up to serve the customer in a way that creates value for both parties. This platform helps participants build a conceptualization of what it means to be customer focused, how to become more credible, reliable and intimate with their customers and how to strategically manage customers to drive profitability and growth.

Customer Solutions—Building the Path to Profitable Growth : In a market increasingly besieged by the procurement mentality and focused on driving out cost, we all find it difficult to sustain margin and profitability while "winning the business." And so the latest buzzword in selling circles is "solutions" as opposed to product. But what is a "solution" and how do you create, and sell, it to your customers? This platform explores key concepts and frameworks to build customer relationships that provide insight into your customers' problems, thus driving the "solution-selling mindset."

Vision to Execution : In an era of unprecedented events, accelerated change, increased information flow and shifts in generational values, it is more important than ever to revisit and reassess basic leadership principles. To take the organization forward, leaders must visualize and plan for the future. Vision to Execution is a practical "how to" for getting from vision to execution using a proven framework for action.

Critical Thinking and Decision Making : In today's highly competitive market, corporations have a greater need to develop their managers' critical thinking skills and decision making ability. This platform teaches participants to make better business decisions on the basis of interpreting various forms of information, avoiding common decision making pitfalls and the utilitzation of improved critical reasoning skills.

Brand Ambassador—The Art of Communication : Pioneered and proven at Avis South Africa, this platform builds employee motivation, pushes employees to take individual responsibility for executing the corporate mission, and creates a culture of customer focus to drive share, growth and profitability within their organization.

When used to develop our Custom Executive Programs, Olin's Critical Platforms employ facilitated discussions, exercises, frameworks and functional tools to deliver their messages. To learn more about our platforms, please contact Samuel Chun at 314-935-8875 or schun@wustl.edu .