Kairos Programme – the Spirit of Opportunity
Facts and figures
- 30 'high-performance, high-potential' Innovation Group delegates graduated from the inaugural Kairos Programme on July 27th 2012, another 24 in 2013 and 18 in 2014.
- Following the success of the course, a further 20 nominated delegates from the organisation begin the Kairos Programme in July 2015.
The organisation
is a global provider of business process services and software solutions to the insurance, fleet, automotive and property industries. The group employs over 2,400 staff in the 13 largest insurance markets, spanning North America, Europe, Asia, South Africa and Australia.
The business issues
The challenges facing the organisation are as follows:
- Improving the leadership of the business
- Re-motivating staff world-wide
- Formulating a strategy for growth
- Re-building shareholder value.
Innovation Group have identified that the best way of addressing these issues is to invest in the high-performance, high-potential individuals who can lead their business in the future.
Further to this, the Innovation Group requires the building of a global network across the organisation.
The development challenge
The main objective of the Kairos Programme is to identify and develop outstanding business leaders that can make a positive impact on both the present and future of Innovation Group.
Delegates taking the programme achieve this through:
- Becoming strategically astute and engaged fully in driving growth
- Constructively challenging the thought processes of the organisation
- Being a catalyst and inspiration for change
- Bringing new, positive ideas to the business
- Networking on a global scale
- Exchanging ideas to promote best-practice.
The programme
As a direct result of the Kairos Programme, Innovation Group has experienced the following benefits:
- The creation of talented business leaders, who are ready and able to move into new roles at short notice (2 delegates moved into more senior roles during the first programme)
- The successful ‘lift & shift’ of business models around international business units
- A significant increase in collaboration across the organisation, leading to innovation throughout the global network
- Direct benefits arising from strategically aligned, executive-sponsored, projects completed during the programme.
“We focused on that asset class; ‘high-performance, high-potential’, and the programme has done a massive amount for them as individuals. The opportunity to work in international teams, on projects that the Board has set; the results have been absolutely remarkable. All of a sudden we’ve got people together, working across boundaries, on common projects – and we really have got tremendous yield from that.”
Andy Roberts, CEO, Innovation GroupWhy Cranfield?
“The reason Cranfield shone through? A combination of; capability - I think the faculty here is absolutely superb; the training facilities are very good; and thirdly, distance learning – using portals and all those techniques to take the training online, and take it into the hands of the people who really want to use it.
Finally, they have the ability to stick with us. We’re a pretty demanding organisation. We ask for a lot and we’ve got it from Cranfield. They really delivered.
We found in the ‘beauty parade’ that the people shone through. There was warmth and empathy, but also directness about what they were going to do for us. Cranfield people are people you can do business with.”
Andy Roberts, CEO, Innovation Group
