IMPM ups IMpact in organisations

Published 2 February 2010

The IMPM is taking a bold and innovative step to ensure that its participants can achieve even greater impact in their organisations as a result of their learning experience, and that companies can get more for their hard-pressed development bucks. Called IMpact, the initiative creates the opportunity for companies and participants to engage other members of the company in the program and increase the momentum for organisational change. We have labelled this IMpact, because it constitutes a pact for development between the manager on the program and his or her virtual team back home, supported as appropriate by the HR or leadership development function in the company. Leverage the learning from the program into the workplace, and spread the costs: in short, send one, develop six.

The IMPM has always sought to bridge the gap between management (or leadership) development and organisation development. The challenge has been how to support the individual managers—or small groups of up to 6—when they return to their organisations after each module and at the end of the program as a whole. The IMPM was designed for experienced managers in practice, who go back and forth between their managing and their learning (in five modules of ten days each, over sixteen months). This enables them to bring fresh experience into the classroom for reflection as well as to carry their insights back to the workplace for action. Given how busy most managers are these days, we set out, insofar as possible, to use their work rather than make more work.

How to make this happen in a management development program?  One way is to make it easy for the participant to teach / coach his or her team by making use of learning materials from, or based on, the IMPM program to learn together with their team back home. There is a portfolio of learning materials developed specifically for this purpose. Informal lunch meetings can be a great way to do it, but customise the process to suit your circumstances.

But many elements of the IMPM can be adapted for the purpose of making greater Impact back at the workplace. Examples include:-
• The field studies can be organized by the teams, which can also participate in their debrief.
• The team can host the Managerial Exchange partner with their IMpact Team, and even return as a team for the guest visit.
• A venture or other project can be carried out by the entire team and not just the manager attending the program.
• Issues arising in the classroom that seem relevant for the company can be brought back to the team for consideration and action, while whatever arises from this can be taken back to the classroom for friendly consulting.
• The IMpact Team can be brought into a module taking place in the same continent to participate in the experience, to learn the IMPM spirit of reflecting in action, and share its overall learning.
• The IMpact Team could join in on specific web lectures, held during the class modules.
• Various IMpact teams in the same company can meet in a forum to consolidate their learning and share their insights about the whole company, perhaps with senior management in attendance (much as General Electric has done in Work-Out). This can lead to major transformation.

No-one has ever doubted that the IMPM can be life-changing; now the challenge is to really make it organisation changing.

 From Management Development to Organization Development with IMpact