IRG Masterclass

The IRG Growth Study found that overperformers think much more expansively about the markets within which they operate. Looking afresh at your ‘where to play’ will open up many potential opportunities for growth.

This Masterclass will explore new ways to define your market more abundantly, illustrated with best practice case examples. Stan Sthanunathan, former EVP CMI at Unilever, will co-host the Masterclass with IRG Founder Frank van den Driest, and share insights into how to build an insight and foresight engine that delivers abundance. We will also look at how you can implement a more abundant mindset in your organization and what that mindset requires from leadership.

The IRG Growth Study found that overperformers are willing to experiment with and operate different business models simultaneously to drive growth and profitability. However, The study also discovered that marketers are often perceived to lack financial acumen.

This Masterclass will feature 3 excellent co-hosts next to IRG Founder Frank van den Driest. With Maaike Doyer, CFO of BMI, we will explore the Business Model Canvas: a simple, comprehensive, visual, and intuitive approach to stimulate and facilitate the exploration of business models without resorting to laborious spreadsheets and financial modeling. With Chris Burggraeve, Founder of Vicomte, we will understand how better to collaborate with Finance, a critical development area for practitioners. And with Robbie Kellman Baxter we will zoom in on an opportunity area for all industries as we move from product focus to use focus: subscription models.

The IRG Growth Study has shown that overperforming organizations focus on eliminating friction for the consumer. Instead, they embrace, in the words of Jeff Bezos, ‘the always beautifully dissatisfied’ customer.

There are shifts necessary for brands and companies to remain successful: moving from delivering a product to a service, then to an experience, and ultimately to Evolving Experiences that constantly improve over time. To delight at the moment is easy.

The IRG has partnered with the world’s #1 CMO recruiter, Spencer Stuart, to define the winning CMO experiences and attitudes for the future: a marketing leader that will help an organization successfully sail the unchartered post-COVID waters, win brand preference, and drive business growth. The IRG calls these leaders Da Vinci Growth Leaders. They understand that driving sustained business growth, and delivering superior shareholder returns, requires the organization to create value for ALL stakeholders – what we call Humanized Growth and they, just like Da Vinci, combine creativity with analytics and empathy.

The IRG collaboration with Spencer Stuart delivered a CMO profile that includes the ten most important CMO areas of experience and five essential growth attitudes. These attitudes are common to all leaders.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the biggest changes we are witnessing is an exponential shift in commerce. Consumers have radically adjusted their shopping behavior this past year, as they continue to try out new channels and brands, and visit different stores. Never before have we seen a behavioral shift to this extent, and addressing the challenges we face in this new age will help our brands approach the future of commerce.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the biggest changes we are witnessing is an exponential shift in commerce. Consumers have radically adjusted their shopping behavior this past year, as they continue to try out new channels and brands, and visit different stores. Never before have we seen a behavioral shift to this extent, and addressing the challenges we face in this new age will help our brands approach the future of commerce.

There is a pervasive myth: that culture is like DNA – and cannot be changed. The IRG Growth Study findings show that growth overperformers realize that culture is a script that can be changed, and they seek to collaborate with partners in an ecosystem actively – they want to be connected.

Open cultures are characterized by a free flow of feedback, information, inputs, and ideas. It requires psychological safety, a growth mindset and willingness to experiment at both an organizational and individual level, and leadership that understands and appreciates that collaboration can deliver more than the competition.

The IRG Growth Study shows that overperforming organizations are characterized by agility and not held up by organizational silos. They can quickly identify micro battles and work collaboratively, both internally and externally, to drive humanized growth for their organizations.

In this session, we will discuss how to create fluidity within an organization, break down barriers and build an ecosystem that delivers humanized growth.

The growth overperformers of the future are those organizations that understand that they are part of a broader ecosystem. By connecting and collaborating within that ecosystem, they will find innovation, inspiration, and growth.

This Masterclass will explore the relatively new field of Humanized Ecosystems management, the impact on organizations, current ways of working, and the leadership skills required to participate in ecosystems successfully.

The IRG Growth Study showed that overperformers excel at bringing together creativity and technology AS WELL AS adding a high level of empathy to that mix. This mix is essential for companies to stand out at delivering humanized growth. In this session, we will talk about the fascinating things possible when you bring together cutting-edge technology, analytics, and creativity.

The role and potential of AI is a critical topic that leaders need to understand deeply, both in terms of what it can bring and what we need to watch out for and pro-actively manage.

The IRG Growth Study found that overperformers over-index on a culture of diversity. Not just in the lower levels of the organization (which is easier to do for any company with many employees), but rather, they bring diversity to the strategic decision-making table. They recognize how important it is to have a variety of backgrounds, education, and level and their role in making strategic decisions.

This Masterclass will explore the importance of diversity, how far we have come, how far there is still left to go, and motivate participants to think about their role in driving diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A large proportion of transformation efforts fail. When studying these failures, one thing becomes clear: there is often a lack of human-centricity at heart.

This Masterclass will share the learnings from a range of transformation efforts, some successful and some less so. It will outline the framework to make transformations truly human-centric and more likely to succeed/p>