Ben Collier, PhD

Executive education

Custom Custom Workshops and Programs

Custom

Workshops built for one organization's audience, from an energy company to a university's senior staff to a government bureau

Alongside the open-enrollment courses I built shorter sessions for specific audiences. They reuse the same experiential core (a simulation first, then the research) but the cases and examples change for the room. The groups and teams workshop has lasted the longest: it started as a guest lecture for an energy company in 2015 and I ran it again in Doha in 2025 for community partners and for a government bureau.

Week by week

2015 to 2025 · Half-day workshops and short programs, on site or at CMU-Q. Scroll the schedule and the slides follow along: five from each session, picked from the decks I taught from.

  1. Session 1
    Creating a culture for innovative teams (guest lecture for RasGas)
    High-stakes teams: why speaking up matters in the cockpitModerate task conflict is good for creative performancePsychological safety: the shared belief that the team is safe for risk takingOrganizational culture and national culture shape team behaviorInnovation requires taking risks and hearing from everyone
  2. Senior staff retreat, Munich
  3. Session 2
    Senior leadership workshop: team simulation and team development In-class exerciseMorning session for the campus's senior staff leadership team
    Planning a leadership retreat: what about learning to lead horses?Why participant-centered learning instead of all lectureForming, storming, norming, performingGroupthink and polarization come from abnormal task and group rolesThe hardest parts of managing a team, ranked
  4. Session 3
    Decisions under uncertainty and psychological safety In-class exerciseCarter Racing simulation and debrief
    Team simulation: race or withdraw before the big raceTrust breaks the link between task conflict and relationship conflictCompeting versus supporting culturesTakeaway: more information breeds confidence, so run a pre-mortemBuild a culture of psychological safety so people can innovate
  5. Session 4
    Using statistics to solve business problems: A/B testing and the Cookie Cats caseBusiness Analytics Summer Summit at Tepper, a summer program for students considering the MS in Business Analytics
    A/B testing: split the audience and compare conversionDaily active users as the core digital metricLTV to CAC: what a customer is worth versus what it costs to get oneTrading off two metrics: more conversions, fewer daily usersThe Cookie Cats case: where should the first gate go?
  6. Session 5
    Business Analytics Summer Summit: faculty lead PresentationsI planned the curriculum and coordinated faculty for the May 14 to 21 program, including a student analytics project with an industry partner
  7. Doha, November 2025
  8. Session 6
    Managing groups and teams: strategies for collaborative excellence (community partner workshop at CMU-Q)Half-day workshop, 8:30 to 12:30, with certificates
    Evidence-based management: what the research says worksShould your team adopt stack ranking?Collective intelligence: a group's ability to solve a wide range of problems togetherDiverse information helps when the team believes diversity is usefulBuilding smarter teams: equal participation and psychological safety
  9. Session 6
    Managing groups and teams workshop for the Civil Service BureauThe same workshop, delivered on site for a government audience
High-stakes teams: why speaking up matters in the cockpit
Wed, Mar 18 Creating a culture for innovative teams (guest lecture for RasGas) High-stakes teams: why speaking up matters in the cockpit

Offerings

  • RasGas guest lecture (2015)
  • CMU-Q senior staff retreat, Munich (August 2015)
  • Business Analytics Summer Summit (2024, 2025)
  • CMU-Q community partner workshop (November 2025)
  • Civil Service Bureau workshop (November 2025)

All courses