BryantonSquare - Leadership Immersion Day

Immersion Day Report Leadership Models

London, 10 October 2014

Immersion Day 10 October 2014 | Copyright © Bryanston Square Foundation 2014 | [email protected]

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This report summarises the Immersion Days organised by Bryanston Square on 10th October 2014. It gives an overview of all the organisations we visited, providing information on different approaches to leadership, capturing participants’ views and feedback and offering further thoughts that may stimulate your ideas. We hope it gives you a glimpse of what happened on the day and the powerful and thought-provoking conversations participants had. Through reading the report we aim to inspire the transformation of leadership in the education sector and beyond and keep the conversation of leadership development alive.

Immersion Day 10 October 2014

Many years ago we discovered that often people charged with making decisions have limited knowledge about what is possible, what others are doing and what could be done. As a result, they often fall back upon an adjustment to what has gone before. This is not because they fear change, but rather because the risk of ‘getting it wrong’ is perceived as being so great, that they rely upon what is known and trusted. Leaders and teams seeking to make change often visit others in a similar environments.

The Immersion Day is a programme for teachers and school leaders run in an unconventional, exciting way - it’s a series of visits to a variety of interesting organisations. Many of these had been through significant change processes, others were notable for innovative approaches to leadership culture. Through Immersion we enable a deep, thought-provoking learning experiences through prepared meetings and discussions.

We were established to help transform the learning environment. We work in partnership with our clients to rethink what learning is all about, how it should be structured, delivered and measured, and where it should take place. We question and challenge the assumptions that underpin many current ways of working and broaden horizons to suggest new ways of doing things. We believe true educational transformation can be achieved by retraining people, reengineering processes and redesigning places. We like to call ourselves a “Do-Tank”. We focus its actions on: developing students of all ages, improving the learning environment and inspiring educators.

About this report:

About Immersion Days:

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2Immersion Day 10 October 2014 | Copyright © Bryanston Square Foundation 2014 | [email protected]


Organisation 1: the7starsJenny Biggam

Co-founder & CEO !

The7stars is a vibrant, ideas-driven, independent UK media planning and buying agency. They work with a range of clients across a number of industry sectors including music, FMCG, retail, automotive, travel and fashion. From their launch in 2005 the7stars has grown to be the UK’s largest independent media agency and this year were crowned the Sunday Times 3rd Best Company to Work For in the UK. !

Whilst discussing her approach to management, Jenny explained that she doesn’t limit the number of days off her staff can take. She lets employees work whenever they want and encourages all of colleagues (101) to participate in weekly meetings. Jenny felt people are more empowered to make decisions, are accountable to each other, less competitive, expected to take initiative and be entrepreneurial. She attributed this to the fact that most decisions are made as a team. Jenny doesn’t waste time on people who aren’t performing, they’re paid off and let go. She explained her belief that it’s better to focus her energy on high-performing employees – she gets energy from them and their collaboration brings results.

“We see ourselves as a less structured organisation than others. We believe in an organic development” - Jenny Biggam

“We don’t have positions at the7stars” - Jenny Biggam Jenny explained that thanks to the unique structure of the7stars, valuing people above processes and treating everyone equally, all of the employees feel empowered to make a positive change within the organisation and beyond. We learnt about some of the initiatives: “Idea of the week” - a weekly cash prize for whoever comes up with the best idea; “Discovery Dosh” - monthly opportunities for anyone to pitch for up to £50 worth of “discovery money” for something that they wouldn’t normally do; “Values Weeks” - to celebrate and bring to life their values. Additionally, Jenny shared that at the7stars everyone sees the annual business plan and is involved with delivering the objectives. As a result, the annual profit-share bonus is the same for everyone.

Why did we choose to go there?

Last year, they won a MediaWeek Gold Award for their work for Daft Punk, launched Discovery’s sister channel TLC to the UK, and helped make Suzuki the fastest selling car brand in the UK.

We selected the7stars based several factors: their unusual approach to leadership compared with other media agencies, to learn more about how to create a culture within an organisation and because of the size of the company that is comparable to many schools participating in the event.

Team Management

Culture At Work



Daren Kemp Managing Partner At the meeting Daren facilitated the discussion with participants. He emphasised his view

that teachers have a direct impact on students' futures. He said understanding this impact enables teachers to think differently about their teaching methods and explore diverse ways to increase students’ learning abilities. Daren believes we cannot limit teachers' roles to providing academic knowledge, as they provide young people with experiences and opportunities to find out who they are as individuals and engage them in activities where they can learn, fail and grow. As a result, Daren perceives teachers as leaders and learning facilitators more than resource providers.

“Are you educating people or are you changing their lives?” - Daren Kemp

“If you’re comfortable, you should be worried” - Daren KempDaren emphasised the fact that as leaders we should always strive to challenge ourselves, continuously develop and learn. He said there should not be a moment when leaders don’t challenge the status quo or encourage different thinking, otherwise, Daren reasoned, the sustainability of an organisation might be at risk. The role of a leader was a big part of our discussion with Daren. He shared his belief that one of the main roles of a leader is to work towards an organisational legacy, engaging their people in that process by encouraging the right behaviours and creating the right environment for them to perform at their best and contribute to the legacy.

Organisation 2: Heidrick & Struggles

Why did we choose to go there? We chose to meet with Heidrick & Struggles to learn more about the approach to leadership in some of the world’s biggest and most successful organisations and to understand some of the key success factors of their leaders.

Team Work

Heidrick & Struggles is a global executive search firm. The company is the first leadership advisory firm in the world. It is one of the "Big Five" global generalist retained executive search firms. The company claims to provide services to a wide spectrum of industries, and focuses on identifying, evaluating, and recommending candidates for senior level executive positions for corporations and enterprises around the world. In 2000 a Wall Street Journal survey ranked it as the best executive search firm in the world in terms of quality of candidates, reputation and value of services among senior-level decision makers in corporate America.

Leadership Style



Why did we choose to go there? As driving democracy and freedom at work places is seen as more important to many organisations, we decided to meet with WorldBlu to learn about why they feel it is so crucial, how to create such environment and what their experience of doing so achieves.

WorldBlu's purpose is to develop world-class freedom-centered (rather than fear-based) organisations and leaders by offering a range of products and services that make it faster, easier and more fun to deliver Freedom at Work™. Their vision is to see one billion people leading and working in freedom. For nearly two decades, WorldBlu has been working with the freedom-centered leaders worldwide pioneering this model. Based on extensive research and real-world experience they've developed a groundbreaking new leadership programme pairing experiential learning with gamification principles to cultivate the mind-set, skills and attributes needed to develop world-class, freedom-centered leaders and CEOs.

Miranda focused on the fact that our environment is changing at a fast pace. WorldBlu are advocates of democratic organisations and challenge their clients to change their work environment from fear-based to freedom-centred and introduce Freedom At Work©. As Miranda explained, this concept is based on 10 Principles of Organisational Democracy™ such as Choice, Transparency, Purpose and Vision. Miranda emphasised the importance of love and humanity and its influence on our daily work life. She explained that as leaders we should showcase love by showing gratitude, humanity by celebrating small successes as well as failures (as long as we learn from them).

“I can only be at my best if everyone else around me are at their best” - Miranda Ash

Organisation 3: WorldBluMiranda Ash

Chief Community Evangelist

Making a Change

Miranda referred to a Zogby International poll which found that 80% of employees want more freedom at work. Part of her job is to work with different organisations to implement a new model of work: Freedom at work™ - a cycle focused on the transformation and improvement of 3 aspects: Mind-set, Leadership and Design. We learnt from Miranda that WorldBlu also designed a diagnostic tool that measures the organisational design and helps leaders focus on what they need to change in order to build a freedom-centred organisation.

“90% of leaders want to build a freedom-centred work place but they don’t know how” - Miranda Ash

Leadership Mindset




James shared with us his story – he hinted at tough times and challenges he faced as a student. We learnt that despite hearing “no” lots of times while trying to make his ideas successful he never gave up and was trying to improve in order to succeed – “failing was the way to learn”, he said. Being a very resilient person, James raised concerns about how often we give students trust and freedom to become who they aspire to be. Reflecting on his own experiences, James questioned whether the average school environment limits students or pushes them in the right direction.

“Imagine if you couldn’t fail…” - James Eder

“Our BHAG is to impact the life of 100 million students” - James Eder

As we learnt from James, The Beans Groups’ Big Hairy Audacious Goal is to impact 100 million students by 2035 and help them make the most of their university years. They created VoxBurner as an initiative to help organisations to better understand students' behaviours and report on their lives, habits and attitudes. By putting in place tools such as online surveys and tailored reports, they aim to enable other organisations to adapt their products, shape strategy, inform product development and plan communications.

The Beans Group is a media company that exists to empower young people to thrive. They have been on an exponential growth spurt since their inception as studentbeans.com in 2005 and in 2013 they won Digital Business of the Year. The Beans Group work on making students life more enjoyable and helping businesses achieve that goal as well. Millions of students connect with their web, mobile and social platforms every day for entertaining content and useful resources, all curated especially for them.

James Eder Founder & Head of

New Business

We met with James to gain a perspective of a young entrepreneur and understand the factors of his success, as well as to understand his perceptions of what young people look for and need in today’s world. - as the Beans Group work to provide relevant inputs to other organisations on students’ behaviours.

Leadership Challenges

Community Development

Organisation 4: The Beans Group




Stuart, John and Paul explained how Kaplan developed new classroom concepts to adapt to their corporate clients’ and students’ demands. They moved from a traditional classroom to a more modern and flexible environment. By using different screens and moveable chairs, they are able to reconfigure the space, giving teachers the flexibility to use materials creatively in order to enhance their students’ learning experience. Stuart emphasised that students’ needs depend on their nature and learning motivations. He reasoned that a PwC employee studying with them is likely to have different expectations of learning approaches and methods to that of a university student.

“Our core values define our company culture and provide the framework for what we deliver to our customers and employees each day” - Kaplan’s values statement

“Building futures one success story at a time” - Stuart Pedley-Smith

As we learnt at the meeting, Kaplan is working on changing the status quo of learning. Their mission statement is to help individuals achieve their educational and career goals. Paul felt that virtual classrooms create the same (and sometimes more) interaction than physical ones. Moreover, she suggested his students feel more confident to ask questions and interact more with their trainers. As a result, Kaplan capitalises on the technological changes and embraces it in their trainings instead of working against it.

As a teaching organisation, Kaplan has a lot in common with how schools are run. We met with them in order to c o mp a r e a p p r o a ch e s t o t e a ch i n g , d i f fe r e n t methodologies used by tutors and their effects as well as how learning can be measured.

Organisation 5: Kaplan Financial

Stuart Pedley-Smith - Head of Learning, Paul Kirkwood

& John Glover - Academy Tutors

Innovation At Work

Kaplan, part of Kaplan, Inc claims to be one of the UK’s leading global provider of diverse education and t r a i n i n g . P r o g r a m m e s i n c l u d e p r o fe s s i o n a l accountancy and financial training, vocational qualifications and Apprenticeships, financial markets, postgraduate and undergraduate degrees. Kaplan combines 70 years of educational and learning excellence with leading online learning technologies, award-winning study materials and support from the industry’s most experienced tutors and assessors who are dedicated to ensuring success in their students’ studies.

Capitalising On The Change



Organisation 6: Next JumpTarun Gidoomal

Director of Merchant Partnerships


Next Jump helps their clients’ employees save money by leveraging the purchasing power of its network and negotiating corporate rates and discounts at over 3,000 of the UK's best merchants. Employees save on everything from everyday purchases such as groceries, nappies and pet food – to items like mobile phones, computers, car rentals and travel bookings. Their big audacious goal is to make the world a better place by fundamentally changing the model of how companies are run. They developed a universal formula in how company cultures should be built: Better Me + Better You = Better Us.

We learnt from Tarun and his colleagues they offer over 50 programmes for employees (around 80) to ensure they are at their best. Among them are initiatives such as: Talking Partners - pairing up people to meet daily, discuss their development or Situational Workshops run by team leaders in small groups across all level of Next Jump. Tarun shared that changing the internal focus to investing in people resulted in profit increase as employees capitalise on their strengths, continue to develop weaknesses and feel happy at work. There is a “No Fire” Policy – Tarun described the impacts: being more cautious when recruiting but also that employees are more open to taking risks,

“We spend 50% of our time investing in people’s development and our culture”

“Our goal is to build a Top 10 global tech company. Our Audacious Goal is to change the world by changing a workplace culture” - Tarun Gidoomal

Despite spending almost 90 minutes in their offices, when leaving we still had no idea what Next Jump actually does. That’s because, as Tarun explained, they believe the biggest change they can make in the world is becoming a teaching organisation and sharing what can be done to change others’ workplace cultures. They created The Next Jump Academy - a teaching initiative for other organisations where they share the challenges and learnings Next Jump have faced in 6 key areas: hiring, onboarding, performance evaluations, leadership development, recognition and giving back.

Next Jump is an example of an organisation that grew tremendously from failure by changing the culture and how they work with employees. We met with them to better understand how dif ferent initiatives influenced organisational results and whether this could be applied in schools.

Inspiring The Change

Team Management



Bryanston Square Foundation

CONNECT WITH US

We are located in the City of London near to both Tower Hill and Aldgate Tube stations. We always like to hear from new people, to discuss new ideas or just to share a nice coffee around our kitchen table. We look forward to hearing from you.


www.bryanstonsquare.co.uk Telephone: +44 (0)20 7480 4101

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BryantonSquare - Leadership Immersion Day

Leadership & Management

Transcript of BryantonSquare - Leadership Immersion Day