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Top HK organisations back training scheme for leaders of the future
Hong Kong -- Saturday, 8 July 2006
Leading Hong Kong corporations are among nine organisations supporting an innovative, practicable start-up programme addressing critical leadership needs for future leaders that begins in Hong Kong today.

The MTR Corporation, Hongkong Electric, diversified group Shui On, the Jardine Matheson Group, and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council are among leading organisations sending young executives of great promise to the Global Young Leaders Programme (YLP) to broaden their understanding of the role, responsibilities and challenges of business in a globalising world.

The YLP seeks to influence a fundamental shift in the understanding of business and its influence and impacts by engaging participants in life-changing field-projects. It is designed and developed by Hong Kong-based think tank the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT).

“This is the start of something new, something that takes business executive education outside the classroom and introduces in a different light to the leaders of tomorrow the real world in which their decisions will have many consequences,” says GIFT founder and chief executive Chandran Nair.

“It is entirely appropriate that this, a Hong Kong initiative for Asia and the world, is being given such strong support from Hong Kong organisations, some of them among the best in their field,” Mr Nair says.

“Many businesses struggle to make sense of all the new different cultures, standards and ways of doing things that the frenetic pace of globalisation exposes them to,” Mr Nair says.

Support from organisations
Francis Mok, MTR Corporation management training and development manager, says: “This programme will enable our young leaders to enhance their knowledge and skills in global cultural leadership. It will better equip them with understanding of the future markets and customers, and the complexity of doing business in Asia.”

Trini Chan, Hongkong Electric’s general manager of human resources, says: “The Young Leaders Programme will stretch the imagination of our young engineers and widen their perspective beyond day-to-day routines, which are relatively disciplined and structured. The result, I believe, is strengthening their ability to cope with changing operating environment and encouraging them to contribute to people in need.”

Life-changing experience
Mr Nair says the field-projects are the heart of the YLP, drawing business, civil society, regulators, and communities together to search for practicable, long-term solutions to the challenges of globalisation. This approach marries leadership building and development problem-solving to a sharp professionalism that at present is rare.

“The YLP takes young executives out of the classroom to do their learning about globalisation and related challenges in real-life situations. This is what I call the ‘Life-Change Experience’. There, they see the faces and the situations on the other side of detached profit-and-loss theories, marketing and corporate social responsibility jargon. They can see for themselves that the issues of poverty, governance, religious tolerance and even climate change are real and confronting, and where real people are struggling to cope with new realities,” Mr Nair says.

“The YLP works to bring perspective to these and other issues of importance, such as business ethics, corporate social responsibility and governance, and dealing with externalities. It breaks them down into what they mean to communities, workers, line managers … people who are at the hard end of life where there are no clear, cut-and-dry answers.”

Each project will deliver an outcome, with participating corporations making real contributions for long-lasting change.

Mr Nair says he believes the YLP was the first programme of its kind in Asia.

About GIFT
GIFT is an independent social venture think tank dedicated to advancing understanding of the impacts of globalisation. Further information about GIFT and details of the YLP prospectus can be found at www.globalinstitutefortomorrow.org/

CONTACT:
Chandran Nair
GIFT founder and chief executive
Ph: (852) 3571 8103
Cell: (852) 9171 3981

Thomas Tang
GIFT managing director
Ph: (852) 3571 8104
Cell: (852) 9160 7595

The Global Institute For Tomorrow
Suite 1002 Two Pacific Place
88 Queensway, Admiralty, Hong Kong
Phone – (852) 3571 8103
Fax – (852) 3585 3910

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