The IMI National Management Conference is an opportunity to meet senior executives at the key high-level forum in the Irish business calendar. The IMI NMC forms part of the IMI corporate membership which gives organisations a  flexible and tailored membership offer.

This years conference Reinventing Organisations – Rethinking Leadership, which was sponsored by eir, was yet another illuminating and thought-provoking event and as always was an excellent place to network with the country’s leading C-level executives. It challenged assumptions about business, organisations and leadership with national and international thought leaders which included Jim McGuinness, Yves Morieux, Emma Birchall, Thimon de Jong and many more.

Dr. Simon Boucher’s opening words highlighted how “the IMI is in the midst of a very exciting period as Ireland’s only globally ranked business school for customised executive education and how we are perfectly poised to support the growing need for executive development in Ireland”.
Richard Moat, chief executive of eir, echoed the conference theme when he discussed how the largest telecommunications company in Ireland has transformed over the last number of years and most recently its re-branding from eircom to eir.

Yves Morieux, Senior Partner and Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group focused on how companies should not aim for the best practices but for the next practices and highlighted the work crisis of dissatisfied workers. The lesson from the opening keynote Thimon de Jong was how “digital transparency is more important than privacy”. Emma Birchall warned us that “something happens in the organisational context that changes our behaviours…not always for the best”.

Rory Sutherland’s entertaining session told us how “we let rationalisers define the problems, but the world is irrational so let’s rethink the problems”. Sue Cox brought interesting leadership lessons from tango.

To finish the day, Jim McGuinness’s very intuitive interview used sport, psychology, management and success to share leadership , performance and cultural insights with us. He spoke about the lessons he has learned from developing and managing top talent especially the Donegal senior football team’s successful All-Ireland campaign of 2012.

The overwhelming theme that emerged through all this?

The importance of collaboration and culture to organisations in this new digital and ever-changing environment.

eir – IMI scholarship launched at the conference

Further details on this will be shared next week on our website. In the meantime, here are some more pictures of the day….