 "Mahindra Group ties up with Yale School of Management")
The Mahindra Group has tied-up with IMD Business School of Switzerland and Yale School of Management to offer a Future Leaders Programme to its senior executives. This is an endeavour by the company to build up its leadership pipeline and will begin in July 2016.
Rajeev Dubey, Group President (HR & Corporate Services), Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) said that a cohort of 32 senior management (from across different businesses) will be a part of this programme which will be of 18 months duration.
"Top executives including chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra will also be mentoring the programme and several other senior management members have played a part in designing the curriculum," he added.
"Top executives including chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra will also be mentoring the programme and several other senior management members have played a part in designing the curriculum," he added.
The programme, which will have faculty from both IMD and Yale School apart from Mahindra Group management personnel as observers and mentors, will have three modules over the one and a half year period of the course. Executives who are part of this programme will also get an opportunity to visit about 70 companies from across sectors and understand best practices and different models.
Professor Charles Dhanaraj of IMD explained that these executives could study the models in these companies and also look at the viability of any of them being adopted at Mahindra Group. "This is the first company specific programme that we are doing in India and wish to develop powerful future leaders who can head businesses," he added.
While the classroom-based study would only be about 18 days, the programme would have coaches and those part of the programme will also visit the Yale School campus in the US and Lausanne in Switzerland (IMD). The executives will be divided into teams, who will be looking into live cases not just within their business unit but the entire group while simultaneously working on group projects.
Edward Snyder, Dean, Yale School of Management said that the programme will help not only in building a strong succession planning framework but will also help these leaders identify global opportunities for the company and its businesses.
The programme will be launched in July 2016, with a virtual kickoff, and will be followed by a week-long classroom module at IMD, Switzerland in September 2016, and a week-long module at the Mahindra Leadership University, Nashik in January 2017, and a week-long module at Yale, Connecticut, USA in May 2017. The finale will be a two day module in August 2017, to be held in Nashik.
The programme will be launched in July 2016, with a virtual kickoff, and will be followed by a week-long classroom module at IMD, Switzerland in September 2016, and a week-long module at the Mahindra Leadership University, Nashik in January 2017, and a week-long module at Yale, Connecticut, USA in May 2017. The finale will be a two day module in August 2017, to be held in Nashik.
The goal of the programme is to build an ecosystem for leadership development where senior leaders who currently lead the Group are involved closely in a cross-mentoring role. Dubey said that the group started working on this project in 2013.
An apex body, the 'Troika' was set up to facilitate the design of the proposed programme, supported by an internal design team. Based on the outcomes, he added that the programme could potentially run once every three years.
An apex body, the 'Troika' was set up to facilitate the design of the proposed programme, supported by an internal design team. Based on the outcomes, he added that the programme could potentially run once every three years.
The design team converged on IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland and Yale School of Management, Connecticut, United States. IMD and Yale SOM are members of a network of 28 business schools around the world, the Global Network for Advanced Management.
Prince Augustin, executive vice presodent, group human capital & leadership development at M&M said that they have a laddered approach to leadership development wherein young managers have an emerging leaders programme and senior leaders also have a separate leadership programme. With the addition of the Future Leaders' Programme, all levels of leadership have such initiatives in place.
Apart from these programmes, Mahindra Group also has platforms like The Shadow Boards for young talent. Here, ten promising managers below the age of 35 are hand-picked from each Mahindra company or division, and are asked to think of themselves as the management committee and work on a key strategic opportunity/problem.
Here, senior management review their projects and recommendations, with many of the recommendations finding their way into actual implementation within the business. Some successful work of the past includes recommendations for the diversification into commercial vehicles and a more personal approach to distributing increments among others.
