Alliance Manchester Business School and Intouch Holdings have been named Finalists in this year's European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Excellence in Practice Awards.
Intouch Holdings PCL is a holding company focused on the telecommunications industry. It is the parent company of Advanced Info Service (AIS), the largest mobile phone operator in Thailand, and Thaicom.
Alliance MBS was commissioned to design a leadership programme for Intouch’s pre C-level suite of 200 leaders. This was a seven-month blended-learning programme that provided an opportunity for high potentials and performers to get away from day-to-day business and firefighting, focus on what is coming over the horizon, understand today’s VUCA business world and develop appropriate capabilities to respond.
Due to the success of the programme, AMBS and Intouch agreed to take forward the partnership for a second year. A further Gold Leaders Programme was commissioned for the same 200 participants, with the aim of creating a bridge between where Intouch Group were now and where the organisation needs to be in term of leadership skills.
The Year Two programme aimed to further develop the target Gold Leadership population’s strategic leadership capabilities to help shape and deliver long-term business improvement and sustainable growth. This was a more ambitious programme, which included significant use of innovative approaches including the Gold Leaders Challenge (a gamification system), a bespoke app designed to ensure group diversity, and the use of complimentary online learning materials via the edxplatform, the use of our AMBS trio teaching model (three teachers in the room) to bring diversity of practice and expertise and a delegate-driven, project-based approach to increase learning impact.
The participants have all reported that they feel more effective in their roles as managers, and the majority reported that the programme had absolutely or to a great extent helped them to make connections and better understand other areas of the organisation. The outputs of the group projects are now being implemented across the organisation and will help to drive the company forward.
Kantima Lerlertyuttitham, Group Chief Human Resources Officer at Intouch Holdings and Chief Human Resources Officer for Advanced Info Service Public Co, and Prong Tharawanich, Senior Vice President Human Resources, Intouch Holdings and Senior Vice President, AIS Academy, commented, “Together with Alliance MBS we have succeeded in developing two truly innovative and unique programmes, which have proved to be genuinely transformational. The programmes have helped develop the foundations for continued innovation and the evolution of Intouch Group to drive future sustainable growth. They have created collaboration across the organisation, enhancing individuals’ leadership skills and fostering a spirit of independent, self-directed learning. The output from the group projects will help to drive the company forward and achieve our strategic objective to become the most-admired Digital Life Service Provider in Thailand”.
Jane Crombleholme, Managing Director of Executive Education at Alliance MBS, said: "We are delighted and honoured to have been part of the design, delivery and success of these highly innovative leadership development programmes. What's particularly heartening is the fact that this work really was a true collaboration between ourselves and Intouch, and we greatly value the partnership that we have developed between our two organisations.”
Professor Eric Cornuel, President of EFMD, said: “We are delighted to continue recognising the strength of partnerships which enhance the Learning & Development within an organisation. This year, with more than 40 submissions spanning across different continents and industries, we came across many exceptional cases illustrating the power of multi-partnership collaborations and testifying to the impact of investing in human and organisational development. In the current context, providing an environment that helps to develop people and enhance their skills is now more essential than ever.”
The team presented details of the programmes during the EFMD Executive Development Conference, which took place online from 21-23 October 2020.
EFMD is the largest international network association in the field of management development and includes over 800 institutional members from academia, business, public service and consultancy across 80 countries worldwide. The EFMD Excellence in Practice (EiP) Awards recognise outstanding and impactful client-supplier partnerships in the domains of Leadership, Professional, Talent and Organisational Development.
