When Alvaro Jose Vargas started his MIT Sloan Executive Education journey, he had very specific goals in mind. As vice president of the institutional business side of Cruz Verde Colombia, which serves as a medication and medical device distribution organization for hospitals, clinics, and medical providers across the South American country, he wanted to improve the hospital-based component of the company.
“We started to grow. We were changing into this very large operation, and I felt that we needed frameworks to help us proceed in that direction. But I didn’t have an idea about the best way to do that,” explains Vargas, who began searching for executive education opportunities that he believed would help him grow the operation while continually improving its safety measures. In 2018, he landed on the perfect option from MIT Sloan with Business Process Design for Strategic Management, which teaches participants how to optimize business processes to achieve sustainable improvements in any industry at any scale. “It gave me a toolbox to improve performance in a way that created value for the company and the stakeholders,” he says. “It was a really cutting-edge framework.”
After that first course, Vargas decided to pursue his Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation, taking additional courses like Digital Marketing Analytics and Corporate Innovation: Strategies for Leveraging Ecosystems. He earned his certificate and forged ahead with this growth plans for the company. But he soon found himself needing to go in a different direction.
A Call to Action
“When the pandemic started, it was particularly challenging for our organization,” Vargas notes. “We needed to support our hospitals and provide the service they needed. They had to grow so fast, adding beds and requiring so much protective equipment. We had people working in really stressful situations, and we had to support our healthcare system. We had to do something to meet that moment in time.”
“A course like Mastering Design Thinking was a great fit that gave me the right tools for the moment.”
In mid-2020, Vargas decided to return to Executive Education for two vital courses in the Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership track: Understanding and Solving Complex Business Problems and Creating High Velocity Organizations. The knowledge he gained from those courses allowed him to create new strategic teams within the organization, face issues with the supply chain head on, find ways to make decisions faster, and more. “It gave us the tools, the frameworks, and the processes we needed to deal with the challenges we were facing. We were able to transform the operation to fit the situation.”
The Next Step
In February of this year, Vargas completed the final course that allowed him to earn his Advanced Certificate for Executives in Management, Innovation, and Technology (ACE). And as he completed the last phase of the journey, focusing on the Executive Certificate in Technology and Operations, he again found himself in new territory as Cruz Verde Colombia shifted gears once again as the country and its healthcare system moved out of the pandemic and into a new normal. He decided once more to find Executive Education courses that spoke to his organization’s needs, leading him to courses like Mastering Design Thinking and Negotiation for Executives.
“We’re again facing different challenges now. We have to use what we learned during the pandemic to become more agile and create the best possible experiences for our customers,” Vargas says. “We want to foster culture in which we add value to the organization through the use of technology and others tools. A course like Mastering Design Thinking was a great fit that gave me the right tools for the moment.”
According to Vargas, he was able to speak to the faculty and his peers about the unique challenges his organization faced as it transitioned out of the pandemic and received a variety of helpful perspectives on how to proceed. In fact, he notes that it was like having a consulting group right there ready to help him solve problems. And he looks forward to having that experience again as he pursues even more MIT Sloan Executive Education courses in the future.
“I will continue taking courses because the world is changing faster than ever,” he concludes. “The courses change you and the way you approach your business. You can learn so much and improve your performance, bringing value to your teams and your company.”
Learn more about MIT Sloan Executive Certificates.