Company

MediaCom signs up for EM Code's Agile Coaching

December 16, 2019

MediaCom, which employs 8,000 people in 125 offices across 100 countries, has signed up to a new coaching program provided by Code to develop a new framework of organisational effectiveness using Agile principles.

The transformation program has seen MediaCom create a new Agile Leadership Team and undertake advanced Agile training, enabling the business to cascade the new working practices to employees on a local level across the globe.

In addition to the remote training workshops, 14 Agile coaches from Code have been assigned to provide ongoing support to the Agile leadership team as the pilot rolls out. Coaches will initially work with teams within MediaCom UK, which will be extended as the program unfurls.

Sue Unerman, Chief Transformation Officer at MediaCom, says: Leading MediaCom, the UK's largest media agency, through agile transformation is a huge challenge. Without Code it would have been impossible.

Their advice, coaching, training and enthusiasm cannot be faulted, and I would highly recommend them to anyone. We have seen the benefits for better efficiency, reduction of wastage, customer service scores and crucially better staff engagement and happiness.‚

Louis Georgiou, Managing Director at Code, added: The difference between the success or failure of a digital transformation strategy often comes down to whether business leaders have effectively taken their people on the journey with them.

Enterprise-level businesses are creating large internal product teams at a fast rate and many organizations are accelerating their four or five-year transformation plan within months to meet the new needs of post-Covid consumers. But with such deep and rapid change, this means that the skills and processes teams need to operate effectively to change rapidly, and often fundamentally, as well.

Some change can happen ‚people up' ‚ but the best transformations happen when the senior leaders recognize a need to change and meet their people halfway down. To do this they need the tools to be able to evolve new ways of working that involve team feedback at all stages. Ensuring people are involved from the start will promote engagement throughout the process and help leaders to understand how their employees feel about the change and impacts within their teams.

We've always historically provided coaching support for our clients and partners, but we're now expanding our coaching and training division as a cornerstone of our offering. The speed at which we're attracting clients shows there is huge demand out there for support in all areas of team effectiveness. This may be for a new product team, where they need training in product fundamentals and in establishing ways of working; agile coaching or specialist discipline training.

The common denominator is a need to optimize methods of working to ensure the best decisions are being made collaboratively across multiple disciplines and teams are nurtured to achieve greater outcomes.

So while the pandemic has brought a need for change to the fore, this shift is also for forward-thinking businesses who are moving towards optimizing operational and innovation processes to get ahead.

We are really pleased to be supporting MediaCom on this exciting program of change. The Agile Leadership Team, led by Sue Unerman, are transforming the organisation in line with their ‚People First' philosophy and experiencing the benefits already.‚

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