INTRODUCING ICMD

To survive and compete successfully in an increasingly complex business environment, organisations today must give the highest priority to developing effective strategies and the managers with the skills to implement them.

Founded in 1996 by Marilyn Chaplin in partnership with Dimension Data, The International Centre for Management Development’s (ICMD) focus is to provide customised management development solutions for leading companies in South Africa.

Creative Partnerships

ICMD strives to be a leading provider of company specific management development. Programmes are currently being developed for leading international companies and draw on London Business School’s and Manchester Business School’s world-class faculty to build an enduring, creative partnership for learning.

Focus & Flexibility

Programmes focus not only on client’s business environments but also on their current priorities - strategic or tactical, global or local.

Customised Services

ICMD Programmes help companies create strategic capability, implement change and improve performance, tailoring the structure, content and style to each client’s needs.

Teamwork

ICMD works to bring the best faculty talent into all its programmes and selects programme directors whom are most able to understand the client’s needs and culture. ICMD also provides experienced programme managers who ensure that the programmes develop and run smoothly.

Individual Learning

Above all, ICMD appreciates that learning must be highly personalised, offering a range of services for helping managers put their knowledge into the context of their own organisations, jobs and careers. ICMD’s design policy is that all programmes should include reflection time and action planning. 

In Summary

ICMD offers its clients a partnership of creativity, focus, flexibility and relevance assisting the organisations and their managers to build strategic capability and seek radical performance improvement.

Directors

Marilyn Chaplin, BBusSci (Hons) MBusSci. has over ten years experience in the FMCG industry in South Africa and has worked for major multinational companies where she held senior marketing positions.

In 1992 she was awarded a Masters degree with distinction and has subsequently co-ordinated courses and lectured at both The University of Cape Town and Unisa SBL. She was a founding Director at the Graduate Institute of Management and Technology where she was responsible for the marketing of the Henley Programmes to leading organisations in South Africa and was the Senior Marketing Lecturer on the Henley MBA and other Executive Development Courses. Marilyn is completing her PhD and continues to consult to a number of South African Organisations. 

Links to Dimension Data

Dimension Data’s roots lie in the networking and communication industry, having grown through a primary strategy of market development and secondary acquisition trail. In 1994 the Group expanded into the software and services arena through the acquisition of SPL, ABS and Whitehouse Technologies, the latter two being incorporated into the formation of EDS Africa. This realignment allowed a focus on the core competencies resident in each division, maximising the potential of the intellectual property, skills and expertise resident in each company.

In early 1996 a newly created division focusing specifically on Internet value-added services made a 25% purchase in The Internet Solution. This emergent arena will remain high on the agenda of the Group’s development strategy. Dimension Data’s unique structure comprises the fastest growing imperatives in the Information Technology industry - contemporary and fine-tuned to the requirements of the clients.

Why the link to Dimension Data? By combining a progressive business school and leading edge delivery mechanisms such as video conferencing and the Internet, clients will be offered value-based solutions that are truly customised to their specific requirements.

Links to Iinternational Bbusiness Schools

ICMD has forged partnerships with two of Europe’s top business schools.

Founded in 1965, LBS is a world leader in helping organisations enhance their managerial effectiveness. It pursues a balanced excellence linking theory and practice in teaching and research that are innovative, rigorous and relevant to international, career-long learning.

More than 100 expert faculty prominent in their specialist areas, 700 professionally skilled degree students and up to 2 000 executives from companies large and small combine each year from countries all over the world to create a unique multicultural learning environment.

This combination of faculty and high-quality participants creates the energy and excitement which underlies all the School's activities.

Broadening Horizons and World class faculty underpin the success of the LBS intervention:

Broadening Horizons: LBS help managers to step back from their own jobs and organisations and look to the broader world of business and society. What changes are taking place, locally and globally? What new management tools are evolving to meet these challenges? How will the company of the 21^st century compete? To answer these questions, managers need to widen the scale and scope of their knowledge. LBS programmes make this possible.

World-Class faculty: LBS’s faculty are among the best in the world. They have won many awards for their work, written many leading business books and are in constant demand as advisors and consultants.

Established in 1965, Manchester Business School was one of the first schools to offer a coherent long-term philosophy to management development, one based on real business problems and real business opportunities. A practical project-based approach to learning, acknowledged throughout the world as the "Manchester Method", develops managers and senior executives with the hands on experience required in an increasingly competitive and international arena. Throughout history thousands of managers, senior executives and organisations worldwide have benefited from this innovative approach. The School has consequently become an internationally recognised centre of teaching excellence. (Refer to Appendix B for Business School rankings)

Wolsey Hall Oxford (WH) is in the business of helping people and organizations improve their performance. It does this through the design and delivery of learning and development programmes based on long experience of open and distance learning.

Prior to 1991 all Wolsey Hall customers were individuals. A notable participant, successful in his London LLB, was Nelson Mandela who studied WH distance learning modules in Robben Island jail. Since 1991 however, it has been able to win and retain major organizational customers. Today, 85% of its core business is with 25 clients including Alliance & Leicester, BP, British Airways, the Civil Aviation Authority, Lloyds Bank, P&O Containers, Shell Exploration and Production, TSB and Unipart. Some examples of current work are as follows:

	With BA WH has developed and is delivering worldwide a first line manager programme designed to help the airline achieve its objective of being the best managed company in the UK by the year 2000.
	With Shell Expro WH has just completed an evaluation of the first three years work together. Shell programme participants and their line managers have identified business benefits of over £18m directly resulting from their investment with WH of just £300K.
	With TSB WH has designed and delivered a programme built around clear business objectives to over 1000 managers. This is becoming a development model across the merged Lloyds TSB organization.

Since WH began in 1894 it has been particularly good at three things:

	effective client management of open learning programmes, which are often complex and delivered to widely dispersed participants;
	the development of high quality learning resource material which is clear, interactive and user friendly.
	excellent programme delivery and support to participants through the medium of a committed group of consultants who act as Assessors and lead workshops.

Its strategy over the next three years is to nurture and build on these core strengths. It plans to use them to position itself as the organization which can best meet client needs for sustained and clearly focused learning and development. 

Services and Facilities at ICMD

Administrative Staff

ICMD has a full time administrative staff led by two Client Service Directors both of whom have had many years of experience in managing both academic and company specific programmes. They provide complete back up to students/companies in terms of enrolment, administration, co-ordination of workshops and booking of faculty and assessors.

Facilities

Facilities at our office include an auditorium, (with videoconference facility) 2 x 25 seater lecture rooms, syndicate rooms, video conferencing, parking and catering facilities.

IT Services

Our partnership with Dimension Data affords us many opportunities to leverage technologies including Video Conferencing (on site), e-mail, Multi-Media materials, Groupware, Intranets, in-house Desk Top Publishing plus materials and production. We are currently setting up an electronic resource centre as an initial initiative.