Manx Executive Challenge 2012 - Yellow team winners!
18 May 2012
Taking part in the Manx Executive Challenge 2012 has been an incredible experience. As a management training and development programme, the Challenge is a unique concept driven by a committee of former Challenge participants and the Isle of Man Branch of the Chartered Management Institute http://www.cmi.im/manx-executive-challenge. It represents an opportunity for individuals to demonstrate their senior management potential whilst working on a project relative to the Isle of Man, which is outside their employment and experience. It is a chance to learn and apply new skills. For me it was an excellent alternative to industry-specific academic qualifications and I was delighted that Boston put me forward for the opportunity and supported my application.
The Challenge committee place you in a team of six individuals, whom you have never met. You are immediately out of your comfort zone and your first challenge is trying to work out the team dynamics. The Challenge is then presented to the four competing teams – to prepare a written report and a 15-minute presentation on “How does the Isle of Man Lead?” How to nurture an existing industry sector or enhance an existing one? The subject matter is so vast that it takes several weeks of some serious brain-storming before you can narrow it down and concentrate on a specific area. We, the Yellow Team, identified the clean tech industry sector as having potential for the Isle of Man to lead the way, and developed a method of funding investment in the industry by utilising a natural biomass resource coupled with a financial product – see our website at http://mecyellow.wordpress.com. Of our competitors, the Green Team focused on how to capture and harness free thought and innovative idea generation; the Blue Team’s project was based on aerospace as a sub-sector of the manufacturing industry; whilst the Red Team also chose to support the clean tech industry.
From the launch in October until the report deadline in April – six months of researching the subject, meeting and interviewing Government ministers, industry professionals and others who have taken part or otherwise been involved in the Manx Executive Challenge you then begin to actually put something down in black and white. The report deadline is rapidly approaching, and you are still agonising over what to put in and what to leave out. Several edits later the report is in, and you turn your attention to preparing the visual presentation, all the while reflecting on what you have learnt throughout the process. You have absorbed an enormous amount of information about a subject that you would otherwise never have known anything about, made lots of connections that you would not normally make during the course of your career, and discovered that the Isle of Man is actually an extremely dynamic place to live and work. I will certainly take a great deal from the experience, from both the highs and the lows of the whole process, developing project management skills, and using existing skills in new areas. All of this can be achieved by just taking part in the Manx Executive Challenge, but it certainly makes it all the more worthwhile to be part of the winning team!
Tanya Rhodes
Manager
Boston Limited