At the heart of IMD’s mission is an ambition to deepen the positive impact that responsible and mindful leaders and businesses can have on society. As part of the CLEAR module in Indonesia, business leaders from around the world took part in a mutually beneficial workshop with Kopernik, a social enterprise supporting communities and building partnerships through social innovation in areas such as health, education, agriculture, women’s empowerment, and sanitation.
Chromafora CEO Angelica Adamski said the experience offered an invaluable opportunity for two-way experiential learning and reflection, co-creating solutions and cross-sector collaboration.
“We all learn something when working with different people. It gave us as much as it gave them – it was a wonderful interaction,” she said. “An organization like Kopernik faces the same challenges as any organization. How do you communicate internally and externally, how do you work together, and what is leadership? How can everyone in the Kopernik organization, with a very clear mission to alleviate poverty, work to their best?”
The group focused their efforts on four areas of Kopernik’s operations, providing structured feedback and recommendations for the future to help:
- Enhance experimentation and influence to improve the take up of its solutions
- Better represent its mission and organization to multiple stakeholders
- Promote greater comfort among employees with its pace of transformation
- Improve the way it prices its services
“If we are working with reducing poverty in the world, we also need a kind organization – an organization that is living the values that we are here to do good,” Adamski said. “We are not here to create a corporate style that is too hard or unforgiving, but we are creating an organization with human values as well.”
Following the workshop, Adamski and three other program participants wanted to do more. They organized a second workshop, this time via Skype, to further develop Kopernik’s communication strategy – both internal and external – to enhance collaboration and understanding between staff and to connect in a more impactful way with partners and communities. As a result, Kopernik was able to restructure its organization and took action to improve how its team interacts with each other on a day-to-day basis and with the wider world about its purpose.
“It’s very important that you give back to society, to make a difference where you can,” Adamski said. “That’s why I volunteered to do more work for them: can I help you continue this process? What more can I do for this company?”
Building on this interaction, IMD has also offered subsidized access to its Leadership in the Cloud programs to support the vocational training of Kopernik’s team, covering disciplines such as strategic thinking, business finance, inspirational leadership and B2B strategic thinking.
Adamski says the experience offered participants an important opportunity to “take time out and reflect” for future action as a leader.
“I was really at a stage in my career where I wanted to think about how to leave a legacy – what have I done in my career, but how can I also take it forward?” she said. “To me, what the CLEAR program is all about is giving room to people to improve and be their best selves.”
