Organized by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the Middle East People Awards recognize individuals, teams, and organizations for their commitment to promoting positive work cultures and enabling people to be their best.

Over 100 participants joined the virtual ceremony on November 1, 2021, which recognized initiatives that were implemented since COVID-19 disrupted the way in which we live and work.

The Best L&D Program Award — one of the most anticipated categories — was awarded to Saudi Telecom Company (stc) for its highly outcome-driven program focused on building agility and digital leadership capabilities.

The program, Digital Leadership for Managers, helps stc leaders better understand the future of the telecommunications industry, and how to design and implement a digital strategy to respond to disruptions that lie ahead. A full list of winners can be found on the CIPD website.

CCL is proud to partner with clients on award-winning programs that help them accelerate digital strategy and successfully adopt technology in today’s rapidly changing and disruptive marketplace.

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The program, Digital Leadership for Managers, helps stc leaders better understand the future of the telecommunications industry, and how to design and implement a digital strategy to respond to disruptions that lie ahead.

The program, which began in 2018 and was adapted to a virtual format during the 2020 pandemic, received a 2021 Gold award for Best Advance in Leadership Development and a Silver award for Best Unique or Innovative Learning and Development Program.

CCL has combined its viewpoint on digital leadership with decades of experience and research in the challenges of leadership and organizational change. The success of this program for stc, along with the recognition from the prestigious Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards, reaffirms the efficacy of approaching digital transformation with both leadership development and culture change in mind.

CCL is proud to partner with clients on award-winning programs that help them accelerate digital strategy and successfully adopt technology in today’s rapidly changing and disruptive marketplace.

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Organizational change is tough enough under normal circumstances. The top performing information communications technology company in one of the world’s fastest-growing regions, however, faced a double challenge.

The country’s leaders had laid out an ambitious plan to modernize its economy and society. The national plan required the company to broaden its telecommunications offerings to IT, financial technologies, digital media, cybersecurity, and other advanced digital solutions needed to transform the economy and society.

The company’s dual challenges: transform itself into an agile, digital organization while also leading efforts to digitally transform its nation.

The organization’s senior leaders had developed a new strategy to “digitize, accelerate, reinvent, and expand aggressively.” Executives and managers within the company needed to:

• Understand the strategy and what it meant for them as leaders,
• Shift the organization’s culture to empower the company to execute the strategy, and
• Gain insights into what they, as leaders, needed to do to execute the strategy.

The responsibility for leadership development and culture change fell to an internal academy. This corporate academy needed to move fast and create momentum for change, but it had significant barriers to overcome.

The telecommunications company was heavily siloed, with little collaboration between business units. The organizational culture made risk and failure — necessary components of innovation — difficult. And even amongst the company’s senior executives, many viewed digital transformation as the responsibility of a digital transformation office, rather than everyone’s shared responsibility.

Solution

CCL has combined its viewpoints on digital leadership with decades of experience and research in the challenges of leadership and organizational change. Our involvement with digital transformation recognizes that leadership development and culture change are key ingredients for any digital transformation effort.

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The company’s corporate academy chose to partner with us to deliver 3 programs to ignite and sustain digital transformation:

1. An Annual Summit for Digital Leadership

This 2-day event brings together 120 top company executives to create awareness and momentum around digital transformation. The event is designed to boost awareness, spark innovation, and galvanize leadership energy in a common direction.

2. A Strategic Digital Leadership Program

This 2-part program is designed to give 120 top company executives new skills, relationships, and ideas. The first module is a 5-day program at the corporate training academy that includes leadership skill development and a digital strategy simulation. During the second module, participants travel to some of the world’s technology capitals — Silicon Valley, London, and Shanghai — and visit companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple. They also work together on a digital innovation project.

3. A Digital Leadership Program for Managers

Finally, about 1,000 top managers from across the company go through a 4-day digital leadership program. During this experience, they learn new leadership skills, what it means to be a digital leader, and how to apply what they’re learning to positively impact their organization. Alumni of this program return to their jobs and enact changes at the team or department level.

These programs drive digital transformation on 3 levels:

• Providing fundamental leadership skills to enable managers and executives to improve personal and departmental level performance,
• Helping participants define what digital leadership means, and
• Sparking new ways of thinking and leading in a digital culture, including being innovative and agile, taking risks, and leading change.

Results

The organizational transformation began even before all the participating managers and executives completed the development programs.

First, the company’s leadership culture has changed. Leaders across the company view digital transformation as their responsibility — something they play a key role in, no matter what their job title, functional area, or market sector. Leadership best practices and a new common leadership language have been widely adopted.

Second, the corporate academy is expanding. Since beginning this effort, it has more than quadrupled its staff, from 6 to 26. Even more impressive is its expanding scope and ambition. The academy increasingly sees its role as driving digital transformation throughout its region and, perhaps, globally.

Third, leaders who have participated in these programs have driven digitally-focused business growth and development. That includes 5 new business partnerships formed during the strategic leadership program’s global immersion and at least 4 digital innovation projects that have been launched or scaled since the training began.

Program Impact

Energized by the success of the initiative, the company is engaging in a new dialogue about its culture, gaps, and ways to bridge the digital leadership divide within the organization. A growing alumni group continues spanning boundaries within the company, and achieving the national imperative to digitize appears closer each day.

The corporate academy credits its partnership with CCL for gaining and maintaining the momentum necessary to reinvent digital leadership and create excitement for customers about the change in the company’s focus. Dedication is necessary, so CCL continually refines the programs to keep pace with the evolving strategy and to help the company achieve its objectives.

The post Leadership Development Accelerates Digital Transformation appeared first on CCL.

With too few women in executive ranks and corporate boardrooms, Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) formed as a nonprofit in 1979. Their mission: to establish a collaborative conduit for industry women interested in professional advancement.

Toward that goal, WICT reached out to us in 1994 for assistance designing an executive leadership education experience for women in senior- and upper-middle management levels. With seed money from Bob Magness and JC Sparkman, 2 cable industry pioneers, the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute (BMLI) was born.

Solution & Results

Sara King, now principal of her own consulting firm, was at CCL when the first class of 24 leaders arrived. “The program filled a strong need for women navigating a male-dominated environment,” King says. “BMLI gave them a place to talk about their challenges, learn from female role models, and build a lasting network.”

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Through the years, BMLI gained prestige among aspiring female leaders, and a competitive application process ensued. Today, a total of 54 annual participants from an array of companies, disciplines, and worldwide locations participate.

Susan Jin Davis, chief sustainability officer at Comcast NBCUniversal, was a graduate of the class in 2010–2011 and returned as a faculty member in 2018–2019. “BMLI graduates have increased credibility and visibility in their companies, positioning them for new opportunities,” she says.

Seeing the program through different perspectives has enriched her as she helps develop the next generation of female leaders. As a BMLI participant, Jin Davis discovered that no matter how high up in an organization one rises, there are always learning opportunities. As a faculty member, she continues to absorb information from program participants. “It’s that reciprocity of learning that happens.”

Program Impact

Sloan Kennedy, vice president of Domestic Network Distribution and Director of Affiliate Sales at HBO, applied to be in the program when she was in her late 30s and relatively new to HBO. Now, she finds strength and camaraderie in other BMLI alumnae at HBO. “We have fired up group chats online and in person to galvanize support for women leaders, increasing attendance for women leadership programs, speaking engagements, industry committees, and leadership award recognition at HBO,” says Kennedy.

“The effort provides exposure for effective and positive leadership through executives that speak to the professional and personal strengths of one another. We challenge and cheer one another in true BMLI spirit!”

This year, as we recognize our quarter-century bond with WICT, we celebrate another milestone: BMLI’s 1,000th graduate.

“In CCL, WICT found the ideal partner, well versed in providing best-in-class leadership development and bursting with faculty and staff committed to their clients’ success,” says Maria E. Brennan, CAE, WICT president, and CEO. “CCL cares about our members as much as we do.”

Each year, we adapt the curriculum to address challenges and changes in an industry that has experienced unparalleled growth, numerous tech advances, new disrupters, and a series of consolidations. “Throughout the ebbs and flows, the industry has remained steadfast in its support of women’s leadership, and its recognition of WICT’s capacity to positively impact companies’ diversity and inclusion goals — and also their bottom line,” Brennan says.

About 10 years ago, after BMLI alumnae expressed a desire to sharpen their skills and reconnect, the annual 2-day Betsy Magness Graduate Institute (BMGI) was established. In addition to networking, participants learn the latest leadership research from business luminaries.

“The partnership WICT shares with CCL is one of the longest-running relationships we have had with an education provider,” Brennan says. “We look forward to seeing what the next 25 years will bring!”

Participants Say

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ABS-CBN Corporation is the Philippines’ largest entertainment and media conglomerate in revenue, operating income, net income, assets, equity, market capitalization, and number of employees.

With a shift to digital communications, media industries worldwide faced disruption. For a broadcaster like ABS-CBN, this shift meant no longer competing just against other traditional domestic players, but with competitors around the globe and in different formats.

At the same time, ABS-CBN needed to develop a new generation of leaders who could backfill the large number of department heads who had been with the company for decades and would soon retire.

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The company’s learning and development unit, ABS-CBN Corporate University, emphasized the need for their leaders to be trained and developed to adapt to the changing times. “They must be more agile, responsive, and globally-minded to lead in this volatile space. Digital transformation is happening so fast — we cannot waste time,” said the university program head.

Solution & Results

In response to these challenges — and as part of its overall Succession and Talent Development plans — ABS-CBN adopted a framework made up of 6 key competencies and 5 objectives.

6 Program Competencies

• Leading mindfully and courageously,
• Championing people and teams,
• Demonstrating entrepreneurial judgment,
• Navigating through change,
• Driving powerful execution, and
• Showing commitment to service.

5 Program Objectives

• Shift mindset from a narrow functional focus to a big-picture, value-creating perspective;
• Strengthen the foundation of discipline, language, and core business management;
• Integrate the different components of business that will be the basis of critical thinking and sound decision making;
• Analyze major challenges of business and create long-term action plans; and
• Strengthen the ability to step back and be more reflective, discerning, and mindful as a leader.

ABS-CBN partnered with us and 2 other learning partners — the Asian Institute of Management and INSEAD — to launch the Executive Development Program (EDP) and the Management Development Program (MPD). EDP was designed for individuals in line to assume senior-level leadership roles, while MDP focused on grooming functional leaders. As of 2019, 42 ABS-CBN leaders had experienced the 2 programs.

Both programs are a year long, and kick off with training from us that includes 2 different 3-day modules focused on soft skills and leadership development. Participants experience interactive workshops, various self-assessment tools, and 1-on-1 coaching sessions. The leadership modules tee up the business modules led by the other 2 learning partners.

“We worked closely with ABS-CBN to have key leadership frameworks such as Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC), feedback, and coaching skills in both programs,” said Chris Dewar, our Director of Design, Delivery, and Coaching. “We balanced that with having enough differentiation so that the 2 programs met the specifics of each leader level. Both programs included post-program coaching sessions, which were designed to help participants apply what they learned, focusing primarily on coaching skills.”

“The CCL faculty are so effective in being learner-centered,” said the program officer with ABS-CBN University, who co-managed the program. “They are able to make the content very applicable to each participant.”

In less than 2 years, EDP and MDP are showing tangible results. ABS-CBN senior leaders use the programs as a resource for filling mission-critical roles, and 8 MDP and EDP participants have been promoted to vacant leadership positions.

The program head said employees now work more collaboratively across departments because of bonds established in the training experience. In another notable outcome, 80% of the innovative and strategic projects that were presented to ABS-CBN’s executive team were approved.

“The authentic relationships the cohort built at the outset fostered the type of collaboration necessary to create game-changing projects in the second phase of the program,” said the program head. “CCL created a safe haven for participants to open up and be vulnerable. It wasn’t just providing content, but creating an environment for participants to safely analyze themselves as leaders.”

Participants Say

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