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Established in 1991, Arena is recognized as one of the North of England’s leading businesses in photocopiers, multi-function printers, IT, and electronic document management. It has five offices across Yorkshire and Lancashire, and is Toshiba’s largest European independent supplier. We were consulted to develop a management training programme for their mid-senior level management team.
Whilst all the managers were already well established in their individual management roles there had been little development of the team. Individual management training had largely focused on specific job functions, primarily through the company’s HR consultant. Arena wanted all managers, who had a wide range of previous educational experience, from GCSE level to MBA, to learn together so that they could develop as a team. This would be a new experience for the managers as in the past, due to their different geographical locations and divisions, this kind of team learning had not been possible.
We felt it was critical to encourage and foster team spirit. Key to this would be balancing the specific needs and interests of individual managers with those of the team, and the company, as a whole. We needed to ensure that the more educated and experienced managers were kept interested, while not losing the attention of those with more to learn. Our academic credentials meant we were well suited to this task. We devised a programme, which would ensure that by its conclusion the management team would be more motivated and work together in a more cohesive and inclusive manner. This would enable individual managers to better perform their own jobs, while also contributing at a more strategic level to the development of the company.
The Arena programme covered a range of management disciplines – exploring both the personal qualities of team leadership and the management understanding of the key functions which underpin a successful company. The Arena Management Programme ran for 13 months and during this time period the 22 Arena managers involved regularly learned together and were able to apply this learning back into the workplace for real business results.
The focus of the courses was on the management disciplines of motivation, delegation, leadership and team building to develop an effective management team. We introduced the programme with a module on The Company and the Management Team so that managers could appreciate current issues, their organizational culture, the importance of managing change effectively for a healthy organization. We also paid special attention to strategic networking, communication and influencing skills, understanding motivations, understanding your competitive advantage and developing meaningful strategies. We then went on to focus on the functional disciplines of finance, marketing, service operations, strategic account management and strategic thinking. This ensured specialists from different functions were able to gain insight into each other’s areas, understand and challenge the policies/principles underlying specific functional areas, gain a holistic understanding of internal and external customers and the cross functional processes and best practice needed to succeed as a company.
The order of delivery (two-day sessions delivered every 6 weeks) were designed to ensure that each course built upon the learning of the previous courses. Hence, managers completed individual action plans which were implemented and then reviewed in class before the next course begun. This facilitated best practice, greater knowledge sharing between departments and illustrated a real commitment to management team development which allowed managers to learn and drive for longer term results away from day-to-day business pressures.
Martin Wright, General Manager, Arena “Key to the whole learning experience was pitching the delivery at the right level. Our delegates were from varying backgrounds and different disciplines within the company. It was essential that the programme was delivered in such a way that everyone took something from each module. Bradford University School of Management achieved this aim on our behalf. The balance was nicely struck between formal classroom type instruction and discussion and more informal group based activity and practical exercises. All of this was specifically focused on Arena Group and this kept the content relevant and interesting. The course was extremely beneficial, very enjoyable, and even, at times, inspirational. Oh – and the food was first class!” Martin Wright, General Manager.
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