Custom Programs
IMD designs and delivers high-impact customized learning journeys through classroom, virtual liVe, and online learning experiences, coaching, discovery expeditions, innovation interventions, mega dives, and experiential leadership exercises.
As the trusted learning partner of choice for ambitious individuals and organizations, IMD tailors learning journeys for individuals with up to thousands of participants, delivered at IMD or the location of choice.
Building on our innovations and reconnecting
Our Custom Programs recorded the highest revenues to date in 2022, just two years after the pandemic and in a world plagued by economic and socio-political uncertainty. During the year we delivered 384 custom programs to 220 global organizations.
At the same time, we continued to build on our innovations, especially on the Technology-Mediated Interventions side. Face-to-face delivery made a strong comeback and accounted for more than 57% of all Custom Program Delivery, followed by Virtual LiVe (29%). Our clients wanted participants to meet again in person and most opted to come to IMD’s campus.
“Thanks to our agile team pushing boundaries to their limits, we made a step change in innovation creating solutions that are more cost effective, have more impact on individual leaders, their organizations, and society. We stayed ahead of our competitors and recorded our highest revenues to date.”
Anna Dunand, Chief Business Development Officer at IMD
Reconnecting was a strong focus in 2022. We expanded and deepened many of our existing client relationships and won new business with our existing clients. We also continued to renew our client portfolio and about one-third of Custom Program business came from new clients and new programs.
Driving impact with new formats
In 2022, we launched innovative formats of delivery to drive impact in the organizations we work with and accelerate their transformations.
We kicked off the first ‘Sprint’ as part of a two-year custom solution to help a global pharmaceutical company cascade its new culture to more than 10,000 people in a matter of months. We have built the sprint approach on our pedagogical expertise in developing impactful interventions for executives and combining that with the latest innovations in technology-mediated interventions. The program is designed to take cohorts of 500 people at a time. These cohorts enter the program every week for a two-week session delivered in a combination of formats such as live virtual sessions, video on demand, reflection exercises, group work, and peer coaching.
Gold and silver awards for our programs
A custom program, co-created with Moroccan state-owned mining and fertilizer firm OCP and Africa Business School, won a 2022 EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award in the talent development category. Our expertise was also recognized with a silver EFMD award for a customized learning program for Norwegian financial services group DNB.
Read more: “IMD recognized for work with OCP and Africa Business School”
“In more than two decades of executive education, I have not seen a learning design with such a wide impact. It affects not only individuals but the entire organization as well as the community. This is a realization of IMD’s purpose to develop leaders who transform organizations and contribute to society.”
Bettina Büchel, IMD Professor of Strategy and Organization
Beyond – developing talent at OCP
In 2018, Morocco’s OCP was a decade into a far-reaching transformation from a mining and exporting phosphate company to a diversified player offering fertilizers customized to crop conditions and farmers’ individual needs. To successfully achieve its growth ambitions and expand into new fields of business, Mostafa Terrab, Chair and CEO of the OCP Group, recognized that developing the talent and skills of its people would be crucial.
Beyond was an ambitious long-term investment in OCP’s talent. The company accelerated its growth agenda by prioritizing its strategic initiatives; building a foundation of academic learning that addressed gaps in knowledge, skills, and mindset; and then having participants apply their learning on 44 strategic projects. This tight link to OCP’s transformation agenda was fundamental to Beyond’s success and underpinned the decision to launch a second cohort and extend the concept across the entire organization.
“Orchestrating the transformation is above all a change of the mindset and learning philosophy of the Group that puts talent at the center.”
Mostafa Terrab, Chair and CEO, OCP Group
Building a culture of collaboration through action learning at DNB
Norwegian financial services group DNB entered the 2020s in a strong position having notched up its best-ever annual result. To maintain this performance in an increasingly complex financial services market, DNB realized that it needed to foster stronger internal collaboration to develop world-class, end-to-end consumer experiences and anticipate its customers’ needs. This meant working as ‘One DNB’.
Working together with DNB, IMD came up with a 10-month action learning journey based around cross-functional shadowing for the company’s top 230 leaders. Broken down into four stages, the program involved a self-awareness stage, a half day of shadowing a peer from another department, and individual and group coaching sessions to debrief and share perspectives.
“Together with IMD, we have created a whole new culture of learning across the organization. The combination of action learning methodology with virtual sessions and internal/external coaching has produced new ways of learning – efficient, creative, exciting.”
Katrine Kalelic, DNB Senior Vice President – Head of Leadership, Talent and Team Development
“Partnering with DNB was a very rewarding experience for the IMD team. DNB made a bold choice by opting for an unconventional learning design that included cross-functional shadowing, which took place virtually for 230 leaders. This was a more challenging but ultimately much more impactful learning journey,”
Ina Toegel, IMD Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change