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| Facilitating conglomerate strategy and transformational agendas |
Background
A huge, emerging market conglomerate with a long tradition, was looking to address some of the pressing business needs, as well as to build leadership capability in its senior and business management teams, through ISB executive education….
The Chairman of the corporate group, with more than 110 businesses, having personally participated in an open enrolment programme on leadership at ISB, decided that ISB’s executive education would be the right platform, for addressing many of the business issues, as well as to strengthen leadership capability among its corporate and business leaders and managers.
Learning Needs
The Group’s growth over the years was fuelled by the individual businesses, which were independent, creative and entrepreneurial. Many of the businesses were also poised for globalization, which would be essential if these organizations were to innovate and grow; The group decided to re-examine its complex structure, strategy and functions to suit the emerging needs of the conglomerate and its businesses.
Design
The ISB was brought in to develop executive education at two levels:
- At the group level, to help re-examine the corporate functions, structure and strategy; and
- At the business levels, to help build strategic and leadership competencies with cutting-edge functional knowledge.
- To top these learning, ISB would also help build a transformation learning platform for the individual and organization, which would facilitate support for new strategic thrust at the group level, as well as the business levels.
Delivery
ISB and the client constituted a Strategic Leadership Development Group (SLDG) to monitor learning and taking the learning to workplace.
ISB identified and engaged extremely competent and well-known expert faculty to address specific issues, and facilitated customisation of learning content and pedagogies through extensive interview and discussion processes between faculty, client management, and participant teams.
a. Group level programme:
ISB constructed a 7 day, three-phased learning programme for the corporate team consisting of the management committee members, sector heads and corporate functional managers.
- Phase 1 dealt with strategizing for the conglomerate, and realignment issues. To build cohesion among the senior management of the vast group, a one-day out-bound programme on team-building was also held.
- Phase 2 provided deeper insights into financial value creation, talent and performance management, strategic information systems and strategic marketing at the group level.
- Focus of Phase 3 was on implementing the transformation agenda that has been set in motion across the group, based on the learning in the programme.
b. Business programme:
The focus of the business programme was to provide general management competencies to the business heads and general managers, and to help them strategize for future in their businesses. ISB constructed a 15 day, three phased programme.
- Phase 1 of the programme dealt concepts and frameworks for business strategy development. A one-day out-bound team-building workshop was held to make the business heads / leaders interact and share in a non-task manner.
- Phase 2 addressed the general management competencies in the functional areas of finance, marketing, human resources and operations, through customised, cutting-edge contents
- Focus of Phase 3 was to build leadership capabilities to address the management of change during implementation of new strategies that are expected to be fueled by the action projects
Pedagogies
Both programmes were designed to provide support to the client in achieving “organisational learning”, through:
- class-room learning workshops incorporating world-class case studies, simulations, group work and interactions with faculty and reputed management practitioners
- out-bound programme for team building and
- group action projects. The action projects were identified and developed in such a way that they had more than an academic flavor, and addressed the “real-time issues” of both the group and businesses, and helped set directions for the future.
Programme Effectiveness
There was a comprehensive assessment of strategic action projects done by the corporate and business teams by ISB faculty and SLDG. Key strategic business decisions were taken at the group level on the basis of the project findings and recommendations.
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