1. www.efmd.org Special supplement | Volume 05 | Issue 03 2011
A GLOBAL FOCUS SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
ExcellenceinPractice2011
Outstandingandimpactfulpartnershipsbetween
businessesandeducationalorganisations
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Special supplement | Global Focus Vol 05 | Issue 03 2011
HighlyCommended
Briefexecutivesummariesofthe
eightHighlyCommendedcases
HighlyCommendedCase:
OrganisationalDevelopment
Partnershipindesign,development
anddeliveryoftheIMpactprogramme
DeutscheLufthansa/CoachingOurselvesInternational/
LancasterUniversityManagementSchool/McGillUniversity
TheChallenge:
How can learning be carried from personal development
in a management programme into the organisation for its
own development, especially in difficult economic times?
This is a long-standing problem, where the innovative solution
discussed could have a huge impact on developmental
programmes everywhere.
TheProgrammePartnership:
– The International Masters in Practicing Management
(impm.org), an unusual programme that for 15 years has
been dedicated to developing managers in the context
of their own jobs and companies by having them focus
on reflecting on their own experiences and sharing the
resulting insights with each other.
– CoachingOurselves.com, another unusual programme,
in which teams of managers develop themselves at work.
– Lufthansa School of Business, the corporate University
of the LH Group, driven by the “Increase Innovative
Impact Initiative”
– The Impact Programme, a programme created at the
interface of these three.
TheCommitment:
The IMPM has resulted in what is probably unprecedented in
management training – several companies have been sending
teams of their managers for almost all of the 15 years.
That partnership has been most evident with Lufthansa,
which has not only been sending teams all these years
(having missed only the one after 9/11) with the learning
being passed back and forth continuously between
programme and company but has also led to an innovative
product development process, a natural commitment and
a smooth joint execution of IMpact in a close collaboration
of business and academics, carrying management
development straight into organisation development.
TheImpactProgramme:
Each manager in the programme establishes a team of
high-potentials back home through whom he or she carries
the learning of the programme into the organisation with the
help of CoachingOurselves.com.
In effect, instead of a changed person returning to an
unchanged organisation, he or she returns to a team of
colleagues eager to share the learning and, more importantly,
help the manager carry it into action. That is the “pact.”
For a company with a tight training budget, this means
that for every manager sent on the programme five to ten
more are developed, not to mention engaged in driving
change. As its execution in Lufthansa is discussed in the
text, this has the potential to revolutionize developmental
programmes of all kinds.
HighlyCommendedCase:
ExecutiveDevelopment
ThomsonReutersGlobalExecutiveProgramme
ThomsonReuters/TuckSchoolofBusinessatDartmouth/
IEBusinessSchool
ln April 2008, the new organization Thomson Reuters was
created when Thomson acquired Reuters, an organisation
more than half its size. The resulting integration was of
significant scale and complexity, creating a global organisation
of more than 50,000 employees.
For the CEO and his Executive Committee an early priority
was to deliver shareholder value from the integration, to
accelerate the cultural integration and to develop a cadre
of senior leaders able to drive the organisation’s strategic
priorities of organic growth and globalisation.
After considering a range of options, Thomson Reuters
developed a custom executive development programme
in collaboration with two business schools, Tuck School of
Business at Dartmouth in the US and IE Business School
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in Spain. Formal approval for the programme was given
late 2008 at the time of one of the world’s worst economic
collapses, a clear indication of the new organisation’s
commitment to the development of its executives.
The three parties collaborated to develop GEP (Global
Executive Program), a programme that consists of two
modules – one in the US and one in Spain that are tightly
integrated into one seamless learning experience. GEP’s three
core themes – “Smart” Growth, Globalisation and Personal
Leadership directly supported the organisation’s strategy.
Engagement of the CEO and the Executive Committee
at every stage has been a defining feature of GEP.
On every dimension, GEP has exceeded expectations.
Participants have revised Thomson Reuters strategy in
key areas, including the organisation’s approach to rapidly
developing economies and to government and regulatory
affairs and have broken down organisational boundaries
to create powerful collaborative relationships.
“Management development courses are often viewed as the
soft, touchy/feely pet projects of the HR department; however,
for me GEP is a vital strategic lever in achieving our business
goals.“ Tom Glocer, CEO, Thomson Reuters
HighlyCommendedCase:
ExecutiveDevelopment
Howtothrivewhentheeconomycrashes
aroundyou
TowergateInsurance/AshridgeBusinessSchool
Ashridge Business School and Towergate Insurance have
been working in partnership since 2007 when Ashridge
won the competitive pitch to deliver the Towergate Executive
Leadership Programme (ELP). To date, over 80 of Towergate
Insurance’s leaders have been through the programme.
Programmeobjectives
The programme inspires and empowers Towergate’s high
potentials, giving them the skills to lead, not just to manage.
Specifically, it has improved Towergate’s capacity to:
– Instil a culture of innovation, focused on delivering
exceptional customer value
– Achieve growth despite adverse market conditions
– Attract investment
– Develop board-level potential
Overallimpact
The programme has helped Towergate’s key people make
the “quantum leap into Ieadership”, allowing them to take
the organisation forward in line with its strategic objectives.
As a result, despite facing the worst market conditions in
living memory, Towergate’s revenues have continued to
grow year on year and staff morale is extremely high. This
has been achieved in perfect-storm conditions for the
insurance industry – with rock-bottom rates, downsizing
or disappearing clients, competitors fighting tooth and
claw for survival, banks applying the credit squeeze and
insurers cutting costs to the bone.
The group has also attracted €200 million in investment,
with private investors impressed and reassured by the
calibre of the Towergate succession pool emerging from
the ELP.
Towergate is on course to achieve its 2007 strategic goal of
floatation on the London Stock Exchange within the next
two years. It has a strong pool of people ready for succession
vacancies, who are highly skilled in leading projects to grow
the Towergate business.
Towergate has also achieved its goal of identifying a number
of individuals who stand out as board-level executive leaders.
As CEO Andy Homer comments:
“As a direct consequence of our strength in so many
insurance markets, we remain a very attractive destination
for talented people and our staff retention levels remain high.
Those who join us at Towergate quickly identify with the ‘can
do’ culture, the potential to learn and grow with the business
and, perhaps above all, they can see the difference they make
to the group as a whole. To ensure this continues, we once
again bucked the trend in 2010 and increased our investment
in the Towergate Business School and our partnerships with
organisations such as Ashridge.”
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Special supplement | Global Focus Vol 05 | Issue 03 2011
Highly Commended case summaries
HighlyCommendedCase:
ProfessionalDevelopment
Thejourneytoworldclassoperations:
optimisingandsustainingasset
managementcapability
RioTinto/TheUniversityofWesternAustraliaBusinessSchool
The challenge for the learning development programme
is to improve asset management competency and align
asset management activities across the Rio Tinto Group.
Rio Tinto, one of the premier global mining companies,
manages $25 billion of plant and equipment (physical
assets) through five mineral commodity-based business
units. How these physical assets are managed (asset
management) is crucial to unlocking value from each
mineral resource for the benefit of all stakeholders.
In 2004 Rio Tinto launched a strategy to ensure optimal value
creation through improved collaboration in key areas of the
business. Elements of this strategy focused on aligning
asset management processes to best practice through
collaboration, improving competences, increasing asset
reliability and developing new asset systems. By 2010 it
was evident that improved organisational discipline in asset
management and the focus on asset reliability had contributed
to improvements in Rio Tinto’s operating performance.
The purchase, installation, use, maintenance and disposal
of plant and equipment involves many of Rio Tinto’s 72,000
employees. A critical aspect in changing how assets are
managed across the life cycle involves influencing these
employees to change behaviour and practice.
Rio Tinto has approached this through a multidimensional
learning and development strategy coordinated by the Asset
Management Centre. The first programme, launched in 2007,
was the Asset Management Professional Development
Program (AMPDP).
The AMPDP is a global learning and development programme
for engineers, managers and superintendents in production,
maintenance and technical-support roles. Delivery of the
programme also engages senior Rio Tinto executives, global
practice leaders and the local senior management team.
The programme is a partnership between Rio Tinto’s
Technology Innovation Asset Management Centre and
AIM—UWA Business School Executive Education team
(Executive Education). Content development and delivery
is managed through a team of Rio Tinto staff (internal faculty)
and academics engaged through Executive Education
(external faculty). The external faculty are globally recognised
engineering professors and subject experts who provide
exposure to cutting-edge asset management developments
and can challenge entrenched views. E-tools are leveraged to
support development and delivery across the different time
zones.
The programme develops individual competencies in five
asset management (AM) dimensions, builds collaborative
networks and establishes AM leadership expectations.
In the last three years the program has also delivered value of
$27 million in short-term savings through AM improvement
projects initiated, developed and approved as a core part of the
AMPDP. This focus on demonstrating value was critical in
ensuring that the AMPDP was the only global learning and
development programme in Rio Tinto to continue delivery
through the global financial crisis of 2008-09.
HighlyCommendedCase:
TalentDevelopment
ErnstYoung’sEMEIAWomen’s
LeadershipProgramme
ErnstYoung/CranfieldSchoolofManagement
In the autumn of 2007, Mike Cullen, (then the UK People
Leader of Ernst Young) felt frustrated by the lack of progress
with the UK’s diversity and inclusion strategy. One key
objective was to increase the number of female Partners
in the UK from 13% to 20% by 2011.
He was aware of the growing body of evidence that
showed that companies with more women in leadership
positions were more likely to outperform their competitors
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EFMD Global Focus | Volume 05 | Issue 03 2011
and a key objective for EY was to do just that to achieve
market leadership.
He met with his heads of Leadership Development
and Diversity and Inclusion to brainstorm how to raise the
profile of their female high potentials and tasked the two of
them to work together to identify an approach that would;
1) make a visible and tangible commitment to supporting
the career development and retention of their women, and
2) help the organisation better understand what it needed
to do better or differently to support their women in achieving
their full potential. This was not, however, about “fixing
the women”.
A single framed gender strategy was developed and one
objective of this strategy was to identify a women’s
leadership programme that would initially target women
within three years of being considered for Partnership.
Cranfield School of Management was invited to design,
develop and deliver this two-day programme with the key
objectives to:
– Build participants’ confidence to make a difference, both
internally and externally, in a way which is wholly
authentic
– Support participants in identifying the key challenges
which they face in navigating their career at EY and
developing appropriate strategies for success
– Create a space in which participants could explore a
diverse range of effective leadership styles and
understand the inherent differences in typical male /
female strategies
– Equip participants to assess their current state and
identify the appropriate focus for their future
development
– Facilitate the establishment of a collegiate peer network
to provide ongoing support and strategic challenge
To date, 149 women have attended the programme and the
feedback has been consistently high. It is a mix of plenaries
and small coaching groups, opened on the first night by a
member of the leadership team with a more informal session
on the second night with three female Partner role models.
One of the key differentiators of the programme is the
experience of the small coaching groups that harnesses both
the expertise of the coach and the rich EY background of the
delegates. To participants expecting a traditional “training
intervention” the emphasis on working through real personal
issues in a confidential and supportive environment comes as
a surprise.
The impact of this programme includes an increase in the
number of women being promoted to Partner; an increase
in the number of Partners in the UK from 13% to 18% (the
original objective); ongoing business networking across
the area; organisational learning about processes and
micro inequities that derail high potentials; access to role
models; an increase in the number of female Partners
promoted to leadership roles; the development of a cadre
of change agents; and a healthy retention rate for this
Partner track group of women.
HighlyCommendedCase:
ProfessionalDevelopment
Partnershipindesign,development
anddeliveryoftheCertifiedClient
AdviserProgramme
DeutscheBank/ESMT
Deutsche Bank and ESMT European School of
Management and Technology have jointly developed a
professional development programme to train approximately
400 Deutsche Bank corporate banking relationship-managers,
covering the highly important midcap segment in Germany.
The programme has been designed as a flagship programme
of Deutsche Bank, training corporate bankers to change
from traditional banking product specialists to trusted
advisors. It is based on extensive interviews with senior
executives and potential programme participants as well
as workshops with executives of the business lines and
HR development at Deutsche Bank.
As a result, a seven-module Certified Client Advisor
Programme covering 21 programme days was created and
kicked-off in June 2009.
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Special supplement | Global Focus Vol 05 | Issue 03 2011
Highly Commended case summaries
The programme’s focus is to change the perspective of the
relationship-managers by exposing them to the challenges
of CEOs of midcap corporations. Our approach is both
academic and practical but a significant part of the
programme is reserved for discussions with CEOs and owners
of midcap corporations. Senior executives of all business lines
of Deutsche Bank are invited to share their experience when
dealing with high-profile clients.
The first programme cycle was completed in May 2010 and
praised as an outstanding success both by participants and
senior corporate managers of Deutsche Bank. All participants
have formed a strong network through the programme. While
the second cycle will be completed in May 2011, Deutsche
Bank and ESMT started the third cycle in March 2011. In
addition, the programme has led to a joint publication of
Deutsche Bank and ESMT; a book on client commitment (Die
Wiederentdeckung des Kunden) to be published in fall 2011.
HighlyCommendedCase:
Specialcases
High-impactlearninginamid-sized
companyservinginternationalmarkets
KAEFERIsoliertechnik/MetierAcademy/CoverdaleTeam
Management/HenleyBusinessSchool
Insulation is one of the most important techniques to increase
energy efficiency. As the threat of climate change becomes
real and growing global competition forces businesses
in all industries to preserve energy in order to cut costs,
KAEFERs services in the field of insulation are in great
demand all over the world.
For a family-owned, tradition-oriented company over 90 years
old, rapid growth across various continents constitutes a
significant challenge. Being a service company, KAEFER does
not own any production facilities and therefore the qualification
and performance of employees is its main asset. Smooth
communication and cooperation across border, company
units and ethnic backgrounds is essential for KAEFER.
Faced with these enormous requirements, KAEFER decided
to establish an elaborate personnel development system
– the KAEFER Academy. Not one, but three partners were
selected for this task, each contributing their individual
strengths that best fit KAEFER’s needs: Henley Business
School, Coverdale and Metier Academy. The scope of this
effort is highly unusual for a mid-size company like KAEFER,
but it has already paid significant dividends.
Almost 350 employees have participated in the programmes,
raising the bar at all leadership levels while also adding
significant know-how in the field of project management,
one of KAEFER’s core competences.
The programmes have not only increased skill levels among
KAEFER leaders and employees. They have also supported
international cohesion within the group, as many employees
from diverse parts of the world and personal backgrounds
have met and worked on business-relevant assignments
together.
In addition, the KAEFER Academy projects have already
had an impact. The results have been discussed at the
top-management level and led to improvements in many
business processes. These early success stories show that
the KAEFER Academy is an excellent investment in the
company’s future: it secures a steady development of highly
skilled employees and managers. It also helps to spread a
common company culture in a highly decentralised group.
HighlyCommendedCase:
Specialcases
TheSheffieldCityRegionLeadersProgramme
SheffieldCityCouncil/UniversityofSheffield/
SheffieldHallamUniversity
This postgraduate certificate in leadership was designed
and developed in partnership between the two Sheffield
universities and five public-sector organisations, whose
representatives were fully involved in specifying its format,
style and timing.
It has three ambitious targets: to make a real difference
to the participants; to kick-start a self-sustaining growth
cycle for a regional “leadership academy” and to show-case
excellence, innovation and partnership in potential
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EFMD Global Focus | Volume 05 | Issue 03 2011
contributions of higher education to the knowledge economy.
The programme comprises four sequential modules together
with a parallel track leadership module combining
individual coaching, master-classes and project work.
Individual modules involve an initial two days of workshops
presenting and exploring key theoretical ideas and skills.
These are expanded with “learning sets”, which identify
and plan workplace-based projects.
Participants undertake this research over the next six weeks,
submitting both group and individual reports for assessment.
Learning sets mix participants across organisations, thereby
guaranteeing a range of approaches and a rich network
of contacts.
The programme is already a success in all its aims.
The partnership between universities led to a unique
learning innovation – “Deliberate Action Learning”. This is a
blend of the major contrasting approaches to organisational
development: systematic “deliberate practice” from the
skills-based tradition; and the experiential, self-directed
group approach from the engagement-based tradition.
Systematic evaluations for the current units reveal outstanding
participant satisfaction and progression. Participants’ ratings
of their competence in core skills doubled from 35.5% to 76.1%
and reports were of exceptional quality (the majority in the
distinction range).
Three projects alone produced predicted £400,000 annual
savings, providing a return on investment (for the entire
cohort) of 750%. These results reflect the value of an authentic
partnership at all levels – between different learning traditions,
universities and organisations.
A UK national assessment of local government interventions
identified the programme as an example of good practice,
concluding: “On the basis of the evidence that we have
collected, we have concluded that the greater the focus on
organisational and place development and the stronger the
practical focus, the more evident the longer term impact will
ultimately prove to be”.
This innovative, collaborative, stimulating, enjoyable and
successful initiative provides a blueprint for constructive
partnership between higher education and public, private
and third sector organisations.
Readmoreonline:
Thewinningcasestudiesand
thehighlycommendedcase
studiesareavailabletoread
ontheEFMDwebsite.You
canalsofinddetailsonhow
toenterthe2012Excellence
inPracticeAwards.
Visit:
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