WISE INTERVENTIONS

We went to the  African country of Ghana and assigned executives who had just completed an executive education program to a journey metaphor, a destination metaphor, or  a no-metaphor control condition. In the two metaphor conditions, executives  participated in a 30-min thought practice, guided by three trained on-site  interviewers in conjunction with the graduation ceremony. Six months after  graduation, all executives were asked to report their continuing goal-aligned  behaviors (i.e., continuing to implement business practices from the program)  through the program's standard follow-up survey either online or over the  phone (when an Internet connection was not available). We found that those  who thought of the program as a journey reported higher tendency to continue  executing the business practices they learned in the program.