Finat Young Managers Club Global Congress: promote the industry

Packaging Solutions

The Young Managers Club Global Congress is always something just a little bit different in the Finat agenda. It is sponsored by Mark Andy, Delfort, Gallus, and Nilpeter – but that doesn’t mean to say the content is largely technical. It’s not!

The 22 delegates participating in the 2017 YMC Global Congress didn’t go to hear about the latest technical innovations in the label industry supply chain. They know all about them! They go to fine tune their skills in being managers, because they (and the companies they work for) believe they will be moving up the management ladder, and eventually be the leaders in the industry.

The ‘young talents’ attending YMC Congress are all part of an eminently successful pool of companies specialising in labelling in its broadest sense, and it is essential that, as they move up the management ladder, they know and understand what they are doing in running a business. They already know all about running a press!

The agenda for this year’s Congress in beautiful Lisbon opened with thanks to the sponsors from YMC vice president Chris Jones of Alphasonics, deputising for YMC president Dana Kilarska.

Young talent

Proceedings on the first day opened with a special and important interactive workshop, led by expert independent strategist Bert van Loon, whose brief was to expand on the thought platform established at the ‘Young Talent’ meeting in Berlin a few weeks ago on building a programme to recruit new external talent to the industry. As Bert said, ‘What would the world be without labels?’ So what skills do we need to attract? Of course, as well as ‘tekkies’, we also need salesmen and managers – and if they are experts in that arena, we can always train them in the technologies. And whatever talents we want to attract, we need to establish an attractive platform for doing so: promote the industry. We need to define how best we can reach our potential audience – and make use of that important new choice in recruitment: the social media. In teams, YMC delegates worked together to invent some thought provoking ways to promote the specialist world we inhabit to potential industry entrants. Company magazines, blogs, videos and apps were all proposed and, said Bert, all could form part of a practical programme in terms of content by ‘showcasing what you can do with printed labels. The many available routes to recruitment were also explored; and Bert concluded the workshop by saying there had been ‘a lot of ideas to boil down to specific proposals in the next few weeks’. The ultimate aim, he said, is to ‘make this real’: to have a solid programme ready to go live in time for Labelexpo Europe in September.

Successful innovation

Delegates then turned their minds to innovational thinking – with Erik Joosten, founder and CEO of Arion, a leading international company in the healthcare market with a special focus on ageing and recovering customers. Himself a successful innovator, Erik said, it is all about selling a mindset, and in his company ‘we don’t sell products, we sell solutions’. He introduced the ‘SMILE’ concept for a successful business: Socially responsible; Market driven; Innovative; Leading; Energetic. Erik and Arion certainly meet all these requirements, and have developed two major innovations in the specialist markets the company serves: the development of a device to aid pulling on and removing compression stockings, and introducing the Swash wet wipes range to the European market – both of which are of major assistance to bedridden patients. That he is an energetic, creative, and active businessman, as well as a successful one, was evident to all participants – and inspiring.

It was then the turn of Pau García-Milà to introduce his own particular – and very different – route to successful innovation…in the clouds. He is a successful young entrepreneur, having founded the eyeOS digital workplace, which won several awards for innovation; IdeaFoster, an ‘idea materialiser’ for both start ups and big corporations; and, among other things, the Leaders University, an online education platform. He is also a regular broadcaster on TV and radio in Spain, and the author of four books about entrepreneurship, idea generation and communication. As he himself has proved – with this curriculum vitae at the age of just 29 – fast thinking is the right route to innovation success. Ideas for innovations, he said, should always answer questions, and should always ask the right questions.

What YMC members want

Following this example of young talent in action, Chris Jones moderated a members’ forum on the problems they face in their work life and the YMC topics that would help them, ideas for future YMC topics and Congress locations. He added, of course, that YMC is keen to attract new members, and to add to the volunteer force which organises its activities.

Day two of the conference consisted of an awe inspiring management simulation workshop, conducted by Zoe Wilkins and Caroline Svefors – two experts from BTS, an international business services company focused on turning strategy into action. It was an outstandingly engaging experience for the participants who, working in teams whose members represented key management functions in a fictitious company, were doubly challenged: to win in business – achieving maximum margins and a happy customer base – and, of course, in this particular workshop, for their team to win the YMC challenge. In a series of in-depth breakout sessions, the teams worked out their in-depth financial statements covering different business units, performance indicators, and investment decision making. They were then debriefed by the workshop leaders, and the different team outcomes were compared.

The programme enabled participants to increase their understanding of key issues that drive long term business performance; solidify their financial acumen; build team, communication, and social style skills; and identify the most important drivers of profitability in specific industries. The whole day, from initial briefing to final debrief, was very lively and participative, with all YMC members involved and engaged all the time.

After Chris Jones formally closed the Congress, the social programme began in earnest for those people who did not have planes to catch: a delightful dinner of Portuguese tapas with port tasting, and the option the next day to join a ‘Taste of Lisboa’ food tour of the gastro trendy district of the city that combined food and ‘culture’. Delicious!

Participants’ verdicts

This year’s event heavily focused on getting delegates to think about their future careers in the label industry, both internally and externally to their own companies. This really is the pillar of what YMC does: focus on what matters most to the young talent in our industry and look at how it can get others to share its passion.