Maverick Indonesia

The Boot Camp Story

How can you tell if an organization is serious about developing its employees? For consultancies like Maverick, people is a tremendously important asset for the company. Consultancy is a people business, and the growth of a company is significantly determined by the quality of its people.

At Maverick, we consider developing our employees a priority. Earlier this year we launched a ‘training passport’, which essentially consists of compulsory training materials for all of our consultants. These training materials are divided into periods, i.e. for entry-level consultants, they are required to undertake twelve training sessions in the first three months of joining Maverick.

We believe that experience is the best teacher. Therefore, we appointed our own senior consultants to become the trainers. We take this training passport seriously up to a point where we will not promote consultants if they are not able to complete their compulsory trainings even though they have demonstrated excellent work performances.

In addition to internal training sessions, we also send our consultants to undertake training programs locally and internationally. The topics are varied, ranging from strategy implementation to leadership. To date, IQPC and INSEAD Business School are considered two of our most trusted training providers.

Until recently when we “acquired” another training partner.

I had the rare opportunity of participating in a world-class quality training program. I flew to Boston, MA late last month to participate in the inaugural Boot Camp training for Associate Directors, conducted by Gavin Anderson & Company (GA).

GA is a global financial, corporate and public affairs advisory firm. Its global network comprises offices spanning in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East as well as the Asia Pacific region.

Maverick was offered a slot in the program because it recently became an affiliate with GA. We have been working on several projects previously and this is definitely an exciting development for both companies.

Extracted from GA-Maverick joint press release:

Richard Barton, CEO Asia ex-Japan for Gavin Anderson, said, “Over a number of years we and our clients have been privileged to work with Maverick, which we believe is the best independent communications consulting firm in Indonesia. Together we will continue to deliver tailored domestic advice to multinational clients as well as global financial, corporate and public affairs communications advice to the fast growing number of domestic Indonesian businesses with worldwide growth and capital markets aspirations.”

Ong Hock Chuan, Partner of Maverick, said, “We have been working with Gavin Anderson almost since Maverick’s first days and have seen the relationship strengthen into a collaboration based on mutual respect for each other’s expertise, strengths and areas of specialization.

“With this affiliation we can now help Indonesian corporations to better access the international markets and investment community. The affiliation also opens up quality training opportunities for our Indonesian staff, such as Gavin Anderson’s global training “boot camp” at Babson College in Boston.”

Although this was only the first time GA conducted such program, it was by far the best training program I have ever attended.

The organization was flawless from the beginning till the end. The training itself took place at the award-winning Babson Executive Conference Center.

For 3.5 days starting from 24 through to 27 April 2008, 16 training participants from all over the world shared best practices and experiences as well as immersed themselves in a series of discussions. Apart from working on case studies, we also had a group discussion about the company – how the world is changing and how we should adapt and seek new avenues so we become part of the changes and do not get left behind.

They were also sessions on self-development, one of which was presentation skills taught by trainers from the Kingstree Group.

Another interesting session was when we were challenged to influence other people (in this case, the most senior people in the company). By observing and learning other people’s characteristics, we practiced how to argue and persuade them so that we get their buy-ins. Isn’t that the essence of PR?

Last Friday we had this role-play in Maverick’s weekly sharing session. I must say I was pretty impressed by how some of my colleagues scored very well because they knew how to influence different people by pushing the right button. Well done, guys!

As a ‘guest’ in the Boot Camp (I’m a non-GA employee, and so was my friend from Kreab, Sweden), one thing that I found very fulfilling was also how people could get to know how other offices operate and know their colleagues better. It’s only great to put a face to a name.

In short, the Boot Camp was truly an enriching experience and I can only say wonderful things about my new friends in GA. Cheers to our continuous cooperation!