Ricoh
Posted on 4th July 2022
The Issue
“We needed to help move our leaders and culture to support a strategic move from a
manufacturer to a true services-led business,”
Chris Mclaughlin, Senior Learning Specialist (Leadership) at Ricoh UK & Ireland.
It became clear that there were other desired outcomes and challenges that needed to be addressed, such as:
• Continuing the blending of cultures that had been acquired within the business over the years to create the modern business that is Ricoh in the UK & Ireland today
• Supporting, influencing and working within the European HR and development strategy, as well as delivering the specific needs of UK & Ireland
• Supporting the creation of a coaching culture
• Supporting the transition from classroom-based taught courses to learner-led mixed media development experiences
• Building on the success of an initial pilot and learning from it
The catch, of course, was that all of this had to be designed and delivered across all four target levels of participants within 12 months!
Action
After a short period of discovery, we worked with the internal team at Ricoh to create an architecture and philosophy for the whole suite of programmes, summed up in The Performance Equation (shown right).
This gave us clarity about the core topics that were to run vertically through all levels of the programme. The architecture also defined the key additional concepts for each level and the desired outcomes. Finally, we set out how we wanted the programme to feel – with learners being asked to review and explore theory before workshops, workshops to be experiential events, and application to be driven through real workplace projects.
We then built and ran the following programmes over 12 months:
• Aspire – a senior leaders programme
• Inspire – a middle leader programme
• Enable – a front line leader programme
• Explore – a pre-management and specialists programme for forward thinking challengers and innovators
Each module was accompanied by pre-work, (reading, activities, videos and online discussions) and post-workshop activities. Each module also had: its own content, tutor notes, set piece and work place based experiential activities, peer, line and mentor coaching and Ricoh’s internal 360 degree feedback tool.
Impact
The level of support that the initiative received from the Ricoh Board. Every programme was sponsored by a Board Director and each level presented their ideas for how to improve the business to them at the end of the programme. As a result, every cohort to date has had some of its improvement ideas adopted by the Board and implemented into the business – including potential acquisition targets identified by the Aspire delegates.
The programmes were assessed as ‘Excellent’ when reviewed for accreditation by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and were a finalist in the British Quality Foundation’s UK Excellence Award for best leadership development initiative, with Ricoh winning the best company award that year.
Testimonial
“Red Thread’s skill in linking leadership material together in a delegate friendly and progressive manner is exceptional. They will go the ‘extra mile’ to ensure the customer’s expectations are realised and more in a true partnership that will evolve and enable Red Thread to become an extension of your business.” Senior Learning Specialist Ricoh
I Can't recommend highly enough how beneficial and enlightening the Red Thread's management insights have been to me. The consultative role in Ricoh UK management training is first class and has resulted in easily the best development I have had in this field. National Business Development Sales Manager at Ricoh
Tagged as: Developing and Enriching Leaders
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