IMD International Search Group Conference in Paris Takes a Different View on Leadership and Innovation

IMD International Search Group Partners gathered in Paris on April 25-27, 2019 for their Annual General Assembly. The meeting was hosted by Sirca Executive Search.

Among the topics on the agenda were varied sessions on innovation and challenges, in a market that is currently open and stimulating with new tools and methods, on best practices sharing in our core executive search processes and on other services such as board evaluation.

Participants were also guided by our guest speaker Christian Monjou, Research Professor at Oxford, UK and ENS in Paris, through a different perspective on leadership and innovation by the study of artworks. Every process, originally a vector of energy, starts some day or other confiscating an ever growing portion of the energy it is supposed to convey in order to ensure its own survival. Without the leader's vigilance, it is no longer the process which is in the service of the firm, but the firm which ends up in the service of the process, leading to an absence of change. Innovation, i.e. "finding what you did not even know what you were looking for", therefore often proceeds as an act of subversion of the existing, the radicalization of an intuition, like Manet getting inspiration from Goya, before being himself reinvented by Russell Connor then by Magritte, or like photography changed forever the act of painting. The role of the leader will be to avoid that paralyzing standardization and "siloization", to let creative ideas emerge in the company, and not only showing the direction but going along with the change.

Present members were then invited to a personal development exercise based on the experience of IMD Director Stéfan Danis of multi-marathon in the Gobi desert: What are our own personal and professional challenges? How to deal with them and actually get things done and reach our goals?

The conference was also rich with exciting news, such as the elections called to the IMD Board:

• Simona Cremascoli, Partner at Carter & Benson, IMD member based in Milan, Italy, joins the Board as Director in charge of internal communication of our organization.
• Besides, IMD is also pleased to announce that the mandates of Directors Daniel Lewczuk, Founder and CEO of Executive Network (Poland) and Stéfan Danis, Partner at Highfield Human solutions (Canada) were renewed.

The board as well as all IMD members wish to express their gratitude to Director Gerard Ketelaar, Managing Partner at Quaestus Executive Leadership (Netherlands), who's resigning from the IMD Board, for his creativity and commitment during his mandates.

Present members were delighted to welcome two new members to their first IMD conference, from the UK and Singapore (announcements to come).

Awards were handed out to the winners of the Member of the Year 2018:

• Highfield Human Solutions, IMD Canada – Business Excellence Award
• Dr. Heimeier & Partner, IMD Germany – International Business Award

The meeting ended with a "save the date" and plans for our next meeting in Budapest, Hungary, on October 3-5, 2019, hosted by our Partner Telkes Consulting.