THE INSTITUTE OF CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS OF KENYA
(Established under the Accountant Act, Laws of Kenya)
THE 10TH C- SUITE SEMINAR
Date: 3rd – 7th APRIL 2023
VENUE: DOUBLETREE BY HILTON HOTEL, KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
THEME: Honing Leadership Skills for Innovation and Success
Time: 09.00am-03.30pm
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
The C- Suite Seminar is an annual congregation of C -Level executives who meet to discuss salient issues affecting leadership in organizations while charting a way forward. The seminar also provides an avenue for C -level executives to meet and network with peers and captains of industries while learning from leading practice from the destination of choice.
SEMINAR OVERVIEW
Organizations today are under more pressure than ever before to innovate—to actively strive for new ideas, continuous improvement, or where necessary, market disruption—and to achieve these goals with both speed and purpose. Whether driven by competition or by the need for sustainability, many organizations across the world have come up with creative approaches to initiating, nurturing, and implementing innovation. Companies such as DuPont, Coca-Cola, Citigroup, SAP, and Owens Corning have appointed chief innovation officers whose full-time roles involve leading and bringing structure to innovation efforts. Some companies have taken even further steps. For instance, the French wine and spirits producer Pernod Ricard has established a Breakthrough Innovation Group and hired “innovation specialists” charged with facilitating idea generation.
The late Apple founder Steve Jobs once said, “innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” As the critical owners of the organization’s vision, the role of the Chief Executive and the senior management in driving innovation cannot be overemphasized. As a member of the C-Suite, we need to ask ourselves a number of very basic questions: What is our organization’s unique innovation imperative? As leaders of action, are our leadership styles conducive for innovation? Do we consider innovation in our hiring and reward system? Have we created a culture that innovation is encouraged and supported?
KEY TOPICS
Leading Sustainable Innovation
Innovation is the lifeblood of a company – driving top line growth and increasing market share. But to enter new markets and continuously fuel product pipelines with new and competitively differentiated products, companies can no longer rely on ad hoc innovation processes and accidental innovation. To fuel continuous innovation, organizations must drive sustainable innovation. Sustainable innovation is a high-productivity state in which an organization strives to innovate and validate ideas in all aspects of its business, including management, divisions, operations, customers, and suppliers in a repeatable and more predictable way. It requires a seamless, structured management approach that begins with board- and CEO-level leadership and connects all the way through technology investment and implementation. Above all, sustained innovation is a journey, not a destination, it can be systematized to bring unprecedented efficiencies and ROI to idea generation, research, problem solving, market and technology landscaping and more. This session will be guided by the question: how do we create a culture of innovation in the organization system that runs through all facets of the organization’s operations and is supported by all in the organization system?
- Securing and Retaining New Talent: The Contemporary Battlefront
The source of competitive advantage has shifted in many organizations from reliability to innovation and flexibility. But what does it take for an organization that innovates to then manage effectively? Ed Lawler in his book argues that it is a combination of the right structure and the right people. Organizations can gain a powerful competitive advantage by tapping into their talent and learning how to effectively organize and lead it. Although many organizations acknowledge the importance of people, most do little or nothing to make them a source of competitive advantage. Companies that are truly competing on the performance of their people give special attention to implementing organizational structures, processes and systems that will help manage and support the performance of an organization’s human capital. This session will delve into how to manage people in a way that they deliver exponential value to the organization and its clients.
- Managing Risk without Stifling Innovation
While innovation has many similarities to other forms of projects it is characterized by a high failure rate and the need to stimulate creativity. More explicit risk management could help in achieving success in innovation projects. Risk management has become a key function in almost every large company, but all too frequently it makes an organization so risk-averse that initiative and innovation become paralyzed. Partly, the problem is caused by the fact that risk managers, mainly reporting to the chief executive officer, tend to see their role as one that’s apart from other employees—as some sort of überguardian of the organization. While there is a call for all managers to be risk managers, one of the risk an organization would face now is the risk of developing a highly risk-averse culture, where no one wants to tryout something new simply because it would have unforeseen consequences. So, what project risk management should be applied and where in the innovation project? This session will explore approaches that a progressive organization’s executives would create an environment where risk management does not stifle innovation.
- The Voice of Leadership: Conversations that Inspire Teams
The potent combination of character and strategy is what largely defines leadership. Pundits argue that if you must be without one as a leader, then be without the strategy. Organizations spend significant time and resources in developing compelling visions and strategies. However, a brilliant strategy cannot be implemented without the right character of a leader. Leadership communication plays an integral role in defining the character of a leader and executing a strategy with team members in an organization. As a leader, you must be able to earn trust, get the buy-in from your team members and inspire loyalty. Surprisingly, all these are greatly influenced by one thing – the voice of leadership. The right leadership voice will engage in meaningful and powerful conversations that focus on results as the endgame
- Effective Top Management Teams
The C-suite variables are likely to be the strongest drivers of corporate performance, including such characteristics as the mix of skills, degree of diversity, and patterns of interaction found among top-team members. Many factors account for the success of a business. However, few are more important than “the leadership process,” which is the way in which an organization’s top staff or managers work together to achieve business results. A collaborative decision-making climate is not an automatic phenomenon. Neither does it emerge overnight. Having known the value of a cohesive top management team in a progressive organization, building effective management team at the organization’s helm should be a strategic and deliberate process championed by the C Suite. This session will guide on how to go about crafting a winning team at the apex of the organization as this is essential ingredient of a performance culture.
- Preparing for Pervading Uncertainty: Beyond Business Continuity Plans
The advent of the Covid – 19 pandemic exposed the underbelly of most organizations on their preparedness to handle a black swan. Plans were thrown into disarray, strategic plans revised, business continuity plans developed in the heat of the pandemic while others could not stand it and had to close shop. In the midst of all these, C- Level executives were the focal point for rescuing their respective organizations. The pandemic brought lessons that rewrote all about business continuity planning. Is your organization ready for the next black swan?
- Bringing the Blue Ocean Strategy into Focus
Written by the business world’s new gurus, Blue Ocean Strategy continues to challenge everything you thought you knew about competing in today’s crowded marketplace. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne argue that lasting success comes from creating ‘blue oceans’: untapped new market spaces ripe from growth. Business world has caught on – companies around the world are skipping the bloody red oceans of rivals and creating their very own blue oceans. The key to exceptional business success, they say, is to redefine the terms of competition and move into the “blue ocean,” where you have the water to yourself. The goal of these strategies is not to beat the competition, but to make the competition irrelevant. Based on tenets of lateral thinking, this session will culminate in each participant making a presentation on how his/her organization can implement a Blue Ocean Strategy.
- Capital Allocation as a Strategy
Capital allocation may be the most critical means of translating corporate strategy into action. Yet some companies today are reducing their capital expenditures, returning cash to shareholders, and holding huge amounts of cash on the side-lines. So how can management deliver better capital allocation performance? Companies that exercise superior capital budgeting discipline do three things well: they invest in businesses rather than projects, they translate portfolio roles into capital allocation guidelines, and they strive for balanced investment portfolios. This session will delve more into capital allocation as a strategy for financial success.
- Entrenching Data Analytics into Business
Data has been termed as the new business gold when put to proper use. This calls for effective harnessing of data that eventually creates more avenues for businesses to solve their problems and eventually thrive. World over, c – suite executives are making business decisions based on analysed data. This calls for cultivating a data culture by investing in technology, supporting data skills, and enhancing the necessary infrastructure. An organization that ignores data around its operations is essentially ignoring avenues to better its decision-making process and problem-solving opportunities. This session will delve into what data analytics has done to successful businesses across the globe.
Other Panel Discussion Topics:
- Key insights towards managing working capital and the related credit risk
- Changing landscape for C-Suite Executives in the Public and Private Sectors
- Mental Health for C-Suite Executives
- Breaking the barriers for success as a C-Suite Executive- Pursuing vertical growth
- Preparing impactful reports and Board papers
FINANCIAL COMMITMENT:
| Category | Seminar Fees |
| Kenyan based Members/ACCA | Kshs. 170,000 |
| Non-members | Kshs. 170,000 |
| International Delegates | Kshs. 180,000 |
Note: Delegates are required to make their own travel and accommodation arrangements.
TARGET AUDIENCE
C-level Executives, Board Members, Members of Board Committees, CEOs, GMs, Managing Directors, Heads of Government Units and Parastatals, Governors of County Governments and Senators, Members of Various Committees, Senior Management, and other interested participants.
CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT UNITS
Members of ICPAK and those from other reciprocating professional bodies will earn 20 CPD units upon successfully attending all seminar sessions.
TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS
For non-Kenyan delegates, please enquire with your embassy on the travel requirements. ICPAK shall avail invitation letters to support delegates VISA processing. To request for one, email: raphael.nguli@icpak.com
NITA REIMBURSEMENT
The Institute is registered as a trainer with National Industrial Training Authority. The Institute’s registration number is DIT/TRN/47. Participants who are registered levy contributors should apply to NITA for reimbursement of their fees. Please note that this is applicable for Kenyan citizens only and subject to NITA regulations. Remember that to qualify you should apply to NITA for approval prior to the date of the conference. Further details can be obtained from their website (www.nita.go.ke).
CONTACT
Further requests can be channeled to us via email to raphael.nguli@icpak.com with a copy to memberservices@icpak.com or telephone call on +254 732 352476.
We encourage delegates to regularly visit our website www.icpak.com for updates.