Although the BBC in general and the approx. 7,500 strong News division has great diversity, female representation in the senior management ranks has been uneven. BBC Global News Ltd – the commercial arm of BBC News which provides TV and online news around the world – was particularly keen to redress the balance: it had a strong pipeline of female talent but also only one woman on their senior management team. We jointly designed a leadership programme that would:

• Work with the talent pool over 9 months to accelerate development, career clarity and visibility
• Use a blended approach aligned with other BBC leadership programmes and provide ample exposure to female role models inside and outside the BBC
• Act as an agent of cultural change, both within Global News and across the broader News organisation
• Ultimately retain existing talent and create the conditions from greater diversity at senior level both in Global News and beyond

The acid test was that it should make a real difference to participants and well as make commercial sense to the client.

The programme has been extremely successful with participants either accelerating their career in Global News or joining other parts of the BBC – something that was defined at the outset as a successful outcome. From a purely financial perspective the programme “paid for itself just on saved recruitment costs”. Project work carried out as part of the programme has also been adopted to redesign processes that make a difference to female career opportunities at the BBC. Finally, each woman on the programme is acting as an ambassador for other women, pushing to change the culture from the inside!

The post BBC Global News Women in Leadership programme appeared first on White Water Group.

• Careful selection of the cohort of 20 women
• Advance psychometrics
• Meetings with all line managers to ensure engagement, understanding and commitment to sponsor the women
• Six face to face modules dealt with critical areas of women’s leadership development, e.g. confidence, authenticity, networking and influencing, strategic planning, resilience
• E coaching ensured that participants remained goal oriented
• Networking events with speakers from the CEO down, providing role models and inner secrets
• Projects requiring the women to give something back by developing other women
• Face to face and telephone coaching at several points
• Grande Finale with CEO, Executive and all line managers hearing the women present their successes
• A dedicated team of White Water experts to present, coach and work with the women throughout

The main deliverable we set the WWG team was to crystallise each woman’s ambition and prepare her for the next job. Within months, women were already accelerating their development and careers, applying for internal and in some cases external advancement. This programme took place during a time of uncertainty due to the restructuring of the business. Many women felt lucky that they had had the support of the team and other participants as this helped them remain positive and focused on planning their careers constructively. After just 3 months, line managers were approaching us to line up women for the second programme – even before budgets had been allocated! Critical to the success of this programme was the building of good relationships with the executive and management. The content had been designed around our experience and the research we had conducted for our book Coaching Women to Lead. This programme proved that we had covered all the right issues – especially when we were commissioned to run the second cohort.

The post Women’s Leadership Programme appeared first on White Water Group.

• Increase your Confidence – many women have situational issues with confidence. While competent in many areas, they are less confident when facing new challenges. As a result of this programme, participants tried out new behaviours and became more clear about their ambitions.
• Plan your career – despite having more complicated lives than many men, women are prone to leaving their success to chance or slow down their advancement in anticipation. In this programme, women mapped their career aspirations over the next 5, 10 and 20 years and set actions in progress toward their goals.
• Make yourself heard – sometimes women struggle to get their opinions taken seriously. On this programme they learned to project presence and gravitas and ensure they presented their opinions in an effective manner.
• Get a grip – Women often have a variety of different roles to fulfill and tend to set unreasonably high standards for all of them, ending up with dissatisfying work – life balance. On this programme women built their resilience, prioritised their activities and recalibrated their expectations and definitions of success. Actual components of the programme will always be decided in consultation with the client to meet the specific needs of their women.

The post In-house Talent Development for Women appeared first on White Water Group.

White Water has worked with Jean-Christophe and his team from day one and was fortunate both to participate in and observe strategy in real time. Boucheron is a a 150 year-old luxury goods business based in Paris with a strong weighting to the French and Japanese markets. Its main craft is high-end jewellery and watches, but it is also famous for its perfumes and accessories. The Gucci Group acquired the family-owned business in 2000 and was not immediately successful in applying its fashion management methods to what is a very different business. Jean-Christophe was hired to turn the business around and expand it in the new emerging luxury markets of China and Russia.

“This was my first full P&L role and the L was certainly bigger that the P! So where do you start in a real-life case study? The best thing for me was that I was supported by the group board to take enough time to think and analyse before declaring my strategy, although we were in the middle of a financial crisis.” He continues: “I was also grateful to have a senior coach from White Water working with me from day one to help analyse situations objectively and prioritise actions.” The next 18 months were a whirlwind of activity from drastic cost-cutting to rebuilding the business on its core values of creativity, design and high-end quality. “I am not a turnaround artist, I am a business builder” muses Jean-Christophe, “so restoring top line growth was an absolute priority but you had to cut spend at the same time… a very interesting juggling act in an industry were sales are driven by marketing investment.”

Reflecting on lessons for aspiring leaders he offers: “There are things I could have done better – some roles should have been eliminated, but there are people who are popular or who are costly to move on. Procrastination just doesn’t work.” He learned that by far the best business advice is: “You really have only 100 days to formulate your strategy and take key decisions.”

To find out more about our First 100 Days services, have a look at this page. You can also call us on  +44 (0) 20 7036 8899 or click the button below.

The post The First 100 Days… Delivered appeared first on White Water Group.