The Challenge: Top talent

Henry Tajer, Chief Executive Officer, had developed a compelling vision and five-year plan for IPG Mediabrands, with the goal of bringing all brands together in order to better compete in the market and transform how they do business.

He realised that one of the key differentiators in this competitive market was attracting and retaining top talent as well leveraging their skill to manage others. That would require, in part, greater leadership capability and accountability within IPG Mediabrands as well as a culture of feedback and recognition.

IPG Mediabrands have a talented learning and development team who had already done a lot of the thinking before they came to Mannaz. What they wanted was a partner that could engage with them on the design and delivery of a programme; providing specific recommendations, design capability and expert facilitation. The brief was to infuse creativity, insight and experience that supplemented their own internal leadership expertise and reflected the new corporate values ‘Dynamic, Entrepreneurial and Empowered’. The ambition was for IPG Mediabrands and Mannaz to partner together to create an inspirational and transformative leadership programme that could be rolled out globally. Needless to say the timing was tight!

The Solution: Align and leverage skill set

Together with IPG Mediabrands we designed a 70:20:10 12-month programme journey. Top talented professionals were invited to apply, explaining how they live the company values through their work and 30 delegates were selected to become the first iteration of ‘D-30’ (Dynamic 30 top emerging leaders). We knew that the strong involvement from more senior management would be a key factor to success and 15 of them were invited to take part alongside the D-30 leaders.

Mannaz co-facilitated the initial residential workshop which focussed on increasing self-reflection capabilities; identifying own values, leadership strengths and development areas; activating the IPG Mediabrands future vision and values; balancing leadership behaviours with the requirements of the company; leveraging the network of peers and executives and creating an action plan for success. All of this was wrapped around the three core values.

On-going mentorship between senior executives and the D-30 leaders under-pinned the experience and deep learning was acquired by both groups.

The Impact: Deliver learning in leader’s real business context

The programme has been a resounding success and exceeded everyone’s expectations; those of the CEO, senior executives, c-suite leaders and internal faculty team. The real success came from:

The application of the 70:20:10 approach.

Ensuring that the experiential learning was delivered through real business challenges via the Mannaz “Leadership Lab” coaching and reflection process.
Having the active involvement of the most senior executives in the business, including the CEO, and co-design and co-facilitation.

The programme continues to provide significant impact and IPG Mediabrands are now working with Mannaz to launch the next iterations in Latin America and Europe.

The client partnership has been highly effective with IPG Mediabrands giving Mannaz a 93% satisfaction rating for the overall programme, 94% for the facilitator and 96% for customer service. All ratings were 10% above industry averages.

Mannaz was also invited to co-present with them at the ICEDR Conference on Organisational Transformation in London in 2016.

We knew that the strong involvement from more senior management would be a key factor to success and 15 of them were invited to take part alongside the D-30 leaders.