For 16 Years, MSCI’s Strategic Metals Management Has Provided Essential Education for Industrial Metals Leaders

MSCI’s Strategic Metals Management (SMM) program is the only metals executive education program designed specifically to shape industrial metals leaders. For 16 years, SMM has combined a metals-focused curriculum with strategy and leadership development training and the opportunity for emerging executives at both mills and service centers to build an industrywide network of peers.

More than 450 executives from both mills and service centers have graduated from SMM. SSAB Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Colleen Phillip, Kloeckner Metals CEO John Ganem, and Olympic Steel CEO Rick Marabito are all alumni of MSCI’s premier metals education program.

The 15th cohort of SMM begins in-person in January 2023 at St. Louis University’s Olin School of Business. Registration is open now. Enrollment is limited to 35 students to create an ideal environment for learning and networking.

How our Industry’s Premier Metals Executive Education Program Started

About 20 years ago, the MSCI leadership, its Board of Directors, and the board chair at the time, Chicago Tube & Iron Chair and CEO Don McNeeley, came together to begin to develop a metals executive education program that would appeal to leaders throughout the industrial metals supply chain. They found a partner in Olin School of Business Assistant Dean and Director of Executive Education Sam Chun.

“The industrial metals industry built America. We have provided the wherewithal to defend our country. We have helped put people on the moon, but 20 years ago we were a graying industry,” McNeeley said in a recent interview. “How our firms run after we’re gone is a reflection of our leadership. Industrial metals leaders need the chance to continue their learning and educational journey.”

SMM is essential for the future health of the industry, McNeeley said. It helps attract new talent to the industry and prepare future industrial metals leaders to take over when current executives retire. “For current industrial metals leaders, this education program assists the preparation of the next wave of leaders for stewardship of our life’s work.”

SMM: A Comprehensive Metals Executive Education Program

“On the job training within firms is important, but it has limits since it only looks at what’s happening in a single company,” McNeeley said. “What about best practices at other companies? What about networking with others at your level in the industry? When we created SMM, we felt there was a need to supplement OJT with something more formal, more academic, more comprehensive, and more cohesive.”

SMM’s unique curriculum provides that experience. Since 2006, the metals education program has been taught by top professors from the Olin Business School, which houses one of the world’s best executive education programs, and from other professors with expertise in leadership and management.

“I don’t have an MBA or other graduate degree. The formal learning I received filled an education gap for me and has deeply benefitted me in my role,” said O’Neal Steel Vice President of Human Resources Jay Morrow, who attended SMM Cohort 13.

The SMM curriculum is split into five modules taught in-person over the course of one year.

• MODULE 1, Leading Strategy, explores the connection between strategy and leadership.
• MODULE 2, Managing Markets and Customers, blends elements of strategic execution, customer management, market-focused operations, and financial management.
• MODULE 3, Driving Operational Excellence, discusses strategic management of costs and production capabilities to improve efficiencies and go-to-market effectiveness.
• MODULE 4, Corporate Strategy, Growth, and Role of M&A, examines the principles of corporate finance and strategy, valuation, and due diligence.
• MODULE 5, Leading for High Performance, focuses on the essential management skills industrial metals leaders need to energize and grow their business.

New to the academic syllabus in 2022, is a case study examining how Cleveland-Cliffs addressed several existential threats and used innovative strategies to grow despite industry challenges. SMM professors will use the case study throughout each of the five modules to bring the themes to life.

Networking also is a key facet of the SMM experience. Mill leaders have the opportunity to develop relationships with customers and service centers get to meet their suppliers.

“The relationships built in class allowed me to get to know a wide range of people that I might not have otherwise known,” said Norfolk Iron & Metal (NIM) Group Vice President-Supply Chain Paul Burbach. “The industry specific case study and covering the major topics that industrial metals leaders face — all in a single course — is what sets SMM apart. SMM has helped me tremendously not only with the hard skills and knowledge needed to thrive in the industry, but also the soft skills and relationships that I will carry with me throughout my career.”

Helping Industrial Metals Leaders Outsmart the Pace of Change

Like many MSCI member company leaders, McNeeley continues to send his own executives to SMM year after year. In fact, SMM is required for executive advancement at both Olympic Steel and Chicago Tube & Iron, as well as NIM, and many other companies in our industry.

“The industry has changed dramatically in 20 years and the velocity of change has increased,” McNeeley said. “To have a specific executive education program, especially a metals education program, with an almost 20-year shelf life is unheard of. SMM has survived because it helps industrial metals leaders build a skillset to assimilate change in our industry at a more accelerated pace.”

Whether your company is concerned about succession planning or relationship-building, there is no better way than SMM, MSCI’s premier metals executive education program, to invest in your emerging leaders. Click here for more SMM details and registration information.