Haskayne’s Master of Management students complete their CCAL capstone project focused on leadership and ethics at the WestJet Campus

The beginning of the winter 2020 semester started with a block week course for the Master of Management (MMgmt) students sponsored by The Canadian Centre for Advanced Leadership in Business (CCAL). The purpose of this capstone project was for students to implement their classroom learnings on a real-world case, with a focus on leadership and ethics in business. David Dick, CCAL’s fellow and instructor of this course, created a plan with the close help of WestJet executives in this real world setting for the students. To make this even more exciting, WestJet offered the amazing opportunity of not only holding this on their campus, but also for students to go through their onboarding session. Seyi Ade-Ojo, a MMgmt student states, “it was great doing a class outside of the university campus. It offered as a real-world perspective on how a successful business operates.”

On their arrival, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Charles Duncan described that WestJet’s onboarding session is unique in terms of the diversity of roles that are present in one room during this process. MMgmt students then sat with pilots, in-flight crew, call centre staff, maintenance personnel and other individuals from different departments and cities to go through the famous WestJet onboarding. They learned about the history of WestJet, what their mission, vision and values are, where they are at currently and where they are headed to in the future. They heard from Ed Sims, WestJet’s CEO, Steven Greenway, Swoop’s CEO and many more executives about the past, present and future of the aviation industry. The following days, students had the opportunity to learn from Charles Duncan about corporate strategy, Brian Znotins about network, alliances and corporate development and Jeff Landmann about labour relations. Deb Simoes, a MMgmt student states, “learning from the top leaders of WestJet allowed me to broaden my knowledge and perspectives about various topics. I appreciated their open-door policy in regard to answering any questions that we asked. They were genuinely interested in what we had to say and respected all our opinions and beliefs.” For each topic, David did a full debriefing with the students where they discussed and analyzed the four areas of culture (through onboarding), strategy, corporate development and labor relations through an ethics lens.

On the final day, cases and challenges were released at 9:00 a.m. sharp and students had until 3:00 p.m. to work on their presentations. The four different areas that were discussed throughout the week (strategy, labor relations, network/corporate development and onboarding/culture) were the topics for the cases. Students presented to an audience of WestJet executives and staff and answered their questions. Key recommendations for WestJetters are being implemented by WestJet. The Master of Management Program at the Haskayne School of Business is designed for recent non-business graduates who understand the importance of acquiring business knowledge and skills to further enhance their expertise and differentiate themselves in the job market.