Unilever

Unilever required a training provider to define and deliver a programme to support key personnel in becoming highly effective Senior R&D leaders.

The challenge

Unilever required a training provider to define and deliver a programme to support key personnel in becoming highly effective Senior  R&D leaders. In particular the programme needed to focus on the behaviour and mindset changes to drive the generation of an ever increasing entrepreneurial culture.

The programme would expand  their ‘One Unilever Mindset’ with a focus on leveraging the company’s global scale for the benefit of its wider business. It would:

• Promote enhanced  networking and cross-fertilisation across the division
• Develop global mindset to the highest levels

The learning would provide an opportunity for the participants to build skills and behaviours critical for senior R&D roles

Programme objectives

As a results of attending the R&D Advanced programme, the participants would have:

• A knowledge of tools and techniques to:

- Drive and develop Unilever’s entrepreneurial culture

- Build high levels of confidence and accountability

- Communicate most effectively within  their teams and across all functional interfaces

- Manage risk and further develop risk culture

• Understand how to build an advanced R&D  strategy
• Build a development plan for themselves that they will take back to their workplace (to be agreed with line manager with wrap-around coaching and on the job assessment).
• Develop deeper understanding of the broader business and insights on how to best work with other functions, based on Unilever approved psychometrics

The solution

The Unilever R&D Academy and QA worked in partnership to co-develop a unique blended learning approach for this programme.  It was structured in three phases:

• Phase 1 was a virtual programme covering several weeks. It included self-guided study supported by readings, virtual classroom sessions, individual diagnostics and reflective exercises.
• Phase 2 was a face-to-face classroom experience and included internal and external guest speakers. The week was interactive with a wide range of learning experiences including team based computer simulations.
• Phase 3 was a second virtual programme covering several weeks. They completed virtual team work on business challenges identified by senior R&D leadership. During phase 3 coaching was provided by both internal managers and external learning consultants and was again supported by targeted reading. The phase culminated in virtual team based presentations to a board of R&D managers drawn from around the world.

The programme used key experts and companies from the external world, bring in examples of new thinking and best practice in R&D leadership and delivery.

To deliver the material a range of learning activities were used.  These included:

• Virtual group activities including web meeting and virtual classrooms
• MBTI personality assessment
• Guided reading – articles, workbook and book chapters
• Classroom courses
• Application of case studies
• Real problem identification and application

Benefits

Some comments from the participants:

“The course has been a great learning experience.”

“Overall, I found this experience really good. It gave me access to, and a chance to discuss with some senior stakeholders, a topic that is not part of my day-to-day work. It was brilliant to hear their views and passions on the subject, and to be able to use this to make some simple, but impactful recommendations. I definitely learnt some new things, and each member of our team brought something different to the collaboration.”