The Sulzberger Fellows meet for week-long sessions in January, March, June, and September or October and then a two day wrap up the following January.

January is the kick off week. The graduating Fellows overlap with the incoming Fellows so the new class can learn from the previous year’s projects. During the first week, highly regarded Columbia Business School faculty as well as Executive Director Doug Smith provide Fellows with essential tools, frameworks and insights about strategy, innovation, managerial decision making, and leading change. Throughout the week, Fellows are asked to use these frameworks and tools to help refine their projects/challenges and to identify core issues they will face while working towards success at those projects.

In the first six to eight weeks, Fellows finalize their challenges. They answer the question, “What Will Success Look Like?” and they work with people at their organizations to develop their projects. They look for signs of progress and early wins. The March session is used to finalize the choice of challenge and identify early wins key to building the momentum needed for success.

In the March session, as well as the June and September/October sessions at Columbia, roughly half the time is focused on sharing updates and getting feedback from their peers and project advisors. The rest of the time is spent learning additional managerial frameworks as well as news industry specific insights and content that can help Fellows succeed at their challenges.

At the final session in January, Fellows present their results before an audience of peers and receive their certificate of completion.

Throughout the year, Fellows are provided task-by-task assignments designed to drive success at the challenges. In addition, the advisors regularly speak with Fellows by phone to assess progress, identify and address issues, and provide guidance. Such phone sessions might typically cover such things as:

• How is the challenge going?
• What’s working? What’s not working? Why?
• Who must get involved to drive success?
• Are you succeeding at getting that involvement? Why? Why not?
• What’s the next wave of wins against the challenge?