Courtesy of IBM, Kristof Kovacs and Caroline Whalen wrote a synopsis of their speaking session discussing 'Life After Six Sigma, Lean, and Agile: Announcing Master's in Business Transformation (MBT)'. Click here to download the full presentation.
Over the last three decades the business world has become increasingly more “VUCA” (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous). Digital Darwinism is now used to describe the current environment of societal and technological change that is testing the fitness of many organizations.
To continue evolving our businesses, we will take a closer look at how business transformation and operational excellence professionals of the future will be selected and developed. Our belief is that early career top talent can be trained for these roles through a highly immersive concurrent track of education, experience, and exposure. These three elements play a critical role in IBM’s first of a kind in-house master’s degree in business transformation, which we coined Transformational Leadership Development Program – or TLDP for short.
Early career top talent not only have the latest technologies committed to muscle memory but also tend to take more calculated personal and professional risks than their highly experienced Lean Master, MBB, and Scrum Master counter-parts. Furthermore, there is now an overwhelming evidence that the brain keeps evolving and maturing well into the late 20s. We are very much counting on that high level of neuroplasticity as we guide our talent through the program.
TLDP delivers more than business transformation and operational excellence initiatives:
If you would like to hear more about our vision for an in-house business transformation engine, please join us at BTOES19 on March 20th at our session titled “Life After Six Sigma, Lean, and Agile”. We are also expected to make an exciting announcement around the external recognition of the program content, so stay tuned!
Kristof Kovacs,
Program Director, Transformational Leadership Development Program,
IBM
Kristof Kovacs is a change agent, a transformational leader, and a developer of early career leadership talent in charge of executing on complex, organization-wide transformations. He started his corporate career in his home town of Budapest, Hungary as part of General Electric’s Financial Management Program. He transitioned from successful global financial leadership roles into management consulting and leading complex internal and client facing transformational engagements.
Currently he is heading up IBM’s Continuous Improvement mission for its $17B services business, improving quality, productivity, and competitiveness. He is the founder and program director of IBM’s first of a kind Transformational Leadership Development Program, an in-house degree level program to develop change agents of the future. Most recently he has been collaborating co-creating with ESPM University of Sao Paulo, Brazil to build out and globally scale a first of a kind master’s degree in business leadership coined Master’s in Business Transformation or MBT. He is a certified Management Consultant, Lean Master, and Six Sigma MBB. He and his wife and their two children live in Southern Maine, USA.
Senior Business Transformation consultant,
IBM
Caroline Whalen is a Senior Business Transformation consultant at IBM in their Global Business Services. Ms. Whalen is the North America Program Lead for IBM's Transformational Leadership Development Program. Her accomplishments in this role include doubling the number of NA TLDP clients over the past year as well as redefining program opportunity management and recruitment processes. Ms. Whalen has professional experience and formal training in SAP, Microsoft Project, Advanced Excel, Lean, Agile, and more. Caroline started her career with IBM in their Enterprise Applications division working on SAP implementations. Within EA, she was responsible for Customer Master configuration and data testing. Caroline also held the role of Test Lead on the largest IBM SAP project in North America. Since transferring out of SAP, she has been working on management consulting engagements, specifically related to Lean and process improvement. Most recently, Caroline served as the site lead for a Lean implementation project at a headquarter location of a Fortune 500 insurance company.
BTOES is the industry’s biggest and best, senior-level, cross-industry gathering of Business Transformation & Operational Excellence industry leaders and senior executives.
It also hosts the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards, which showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs.
The summits hosts a number of private forums for C-Level & Global corporate-level leaders as well as business unit heads.
With over 150 speakers, over 100 sessions, 12 Keynotes, 9 Track Themes, 5 parallel tracks, 60+ track sessions, 50 roundtable discussions, 20 Interactive Workshops, 6 Thought Leader Panels, 5 Leaders Boardrooms, 5 co-located events, the Industry Awards Program, Site Visits, 20+ hours of social networking including 2 gala cocktail parties, dinners, numerous group activities, this is the ultimate event to benchmark, network and drive Operational Excellence to the next level.
Quick Links
There is a strong focus on Cultural Transformation, Customer Delight, Sustaining an Operational Excellence program, Need for end-to-end Business Transformation, Keeping up with new technologies/impact of digitalization and Leadership Buy-in & Understanding. We dedicated two tracks to advanced technologies, such as AI, Machine Learning, RPA, Predictive Analytics, Blockchain, Cloud infrastructure etc.
The agenda is designed to encourage active meaningful conversations though all day enhanced networking and interaction opportunities, including
All-day Refreshment & Themed Breaks
1¼ Hour Hot Breakfast Networking Sessions
1½ Hour Hot Plated Networking Lunches with Topic & Industry Sector focussed tables
1½ Hour Roundtable Sessions by Topic & Industry Sector.
Keynote & Themes Panel Sessions
Hosted Welcome Receptions from 5.30pm
Expanded more lavish Awards Program
Newly launched Night Summit for attendees to meet after dinner
For more information or to discuss the summit in more detail please schedule a call below,
Click here to schedule a call.