Excellence in Practice 2014 has once again proved to be a vintage year. The Awards continue to demonstrate high-quality partnerships, which has led us to give wider visibility to a larger number of cases this year.
All those that made it into the final deliberation during the jury process get a mention as finalists. And in all categories Gold and Silver winners have been identified and receive visibility in this Global Focus supplement and other follow on initiatives.
Interestingly, the executive development cases are more focused on impact than ever. While in the past, investing in incumbent executives was frequently seen as a point of conviction or belief, now the organisational agenda is mentioned explicitly more often than not. Both Gold and Silver award winners are examples, setting up development activities with the purpose of clarifying priorities and increasing profit growth.
Growth as a challenge is a recurring theme throughout quite a number of cases. This is a sign of hope, with L&D actively helping to explore and develop new pathways for the business. Our talent development award winners see a growing need for “internal” talent to populate the succession or entrepreneurial pipeline respectively.
The organisation development award winners are even explicitly referring to an organisational turning point where, following re-alignment and restructuring efforts, large-scale interventions are initiated to foster engagement, problem solving, innovation and new perspectives.
In contrast to this exploration paradigm, the two professional development award winners focus on the improvement of current “business” practices. Both public-sector cases are looking to increase or add capabilities to streamline processes and reduce costs and form an interesting complement to the growth and exploration cases awarded in the other categories.
Still, the above observations are probably too black and white to reflect the entire development agenda in each of the cases. Simplifications do not entirely reflect the developers’ dilemma and challenge: how to maximise the current way of doing business while also exploring new pathways?
A dilemma, which all partners are continuously confronted with – throughout the process of challenge definition, commitment setting and deployment, is also at the heart of EFMD’s 2014 Executive Development conference, where the winning cases will be presented – where we hope to meet you and join the process of exploring new pathways for executive development.
The 2014 winners are:
Gold:
- Friesland Campina & Ashridge Business School: Building international leadership capability
- PSB & University of Chicago Booth School of Business: A stepping stone towards a new leadership style
- Stora Enso & IMD: A pathbreaking partnership
- University Medical Center Groningen & Amsterdam Business School: Making it better
Silver:
- Saltire Foundation & Babson College: Developing entrepreneurial leaders for Scotland
- Fletcher Building & University of Auckland Business School: Taking leaders to the edge
- BHP Billiton & BHP Billiton Group Learning: Leader-led teaching to re-energise and redefine leadership
- Cabinet Office & Said Business School University of Oxford & Deloitte: Major projects leadership academy
- Recognising outstanding learning and development partnerships: 2021 Excellence in Practice - September 14, 2021
- Leading transformation: Shaping the automotive transformation amidst turbulent times - September 14, 2021
- How TRATON uses training to accelerate its global champion strategy - September 14, 2021
