Orchestrating Winning Performance

Jean-François Manzoni is the President of IMD, where he also serves as the Nestlé Professor. 

His research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations and corporate governance.

At the organisational level, Professor Manzoni studies the content of change (including the use of levers such as strategy, structure and systems), the management of the change process and the role of leaders therein. His work in this area has appeared in several books, articles and over 30 cases, four of which received Case of the Year Awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Clearing House. He also acted as content expert in the development of a ground-breaking computer-based change management simulation, the Change Pro Simulation®.

At the individual level, Professor Manzoni studies how leaders can create a high-performance work environment and what they can do to modify their leadership style in that direction. This stream of research has led to several articles and a book entitled The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome: How good managers cause great people to fail (with Jean-Louis Barsoux). This book, which is built on Manzoni's and Barsoux's initial Harvard Business Review article introducing the term "set-up-to-fail syndrome", received two Book of the Year awards and is being discussed in undergraduate, MBA and executive development programs all over the world.

On the corporate governance side, Professor Manzoni focuses on interpersonal dynamics within the Boardroom and between management and the Board. Ongoing research examining the impact of interpersonal dynamics on increasingly diverse Boards of Directors received the Research Award on Leadership & Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. A Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Directors, Professor Manzoni is currently serving on the Board of Keppel Corp., an international diversified group listed on the Singapore stock exchange, and previously served on the Boards of Singapore's Civil Service College and of AACSB International, the world's largest business education alliance.

A citizen of Canada and France, Professor Manzoni received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School. He had earlier graduated from l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montréal and worked with Ernst and Young in Montreal before receiving an MBA from McGill University.

Prior to re-joining IMD in 2016, Professor Manzoni had served on the IMD faculty between 2004 and 2010. He also previously served on the faculty of INSEAD, in Singapore and in Fontainebleau. While at INSEAD he founded and directed for four years the PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organizations. He later directed the Global Leadership Centre supporting the school's leadership-related coaching, teaching and research activities throughout the world

The recipient of several awards for excellence in teaching, Professor Manzoni is a frequent keynote speaker. He also performed consulting, top management team support and leadership development work for several international organisations, which has led him to work in more than thirty countries over the years.

He currently serves or served on several International Advisory Panels, including Digital Switzerland, Singapore's Public Service Division and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

Katharina joined IMD as Affiliate Professor of Leadership in September 2019. She has taught executives globally, specializing in self-leadership and cross-cultural team leadership in times of Change.

Before joining IMD, Katharina led the Office of Executive Development at Singapore Management University (SMU). Being at SMU since 2013, she directed Open Programs such as ALPINE (Asia Leaders Program in Infrastructure) or the J&J Hospital Management Program. For Custom Programs, she designed, directed and taught for clients such as Maersk, UTC Carrier, Otis, Sumitomo, Mondelez, Barclays, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis, Bayer, Infineon, Shangri-La, IBM, Pernod Ricard and the Abu Dhabi Distribution Company (UAE).

Prior to her experience in Asia, Katharina was Program Director and Head Life Science Industries at the European School of Management and Technology (esmt), Berlin, where she directed and taught in executive and degree programs. 

Before her career in business education, Katharina worked 9 years with Arthur Andersen and Deloitte Consulting. Her PhD in pharmacology adds the empirical lens of a natural scientist to her profile.

Katharina has published numerous case studies for business education on Harvard Business Publishing http://hbsp.harvard.edu/ e.g. B&C in Russia, Medneo, Pina Bausch - Leadership as collective genius, as well as the SMU Case Center https://cmp.smu.edu.sg/ e.g. Sarulla Geothermal Power Project, Building the Singapore Sports Hub, Stakeholder Issues at the Singapore Sports Hub, Singhealth - Winning the war against diabetes.

Her book chapters include Pina Bausch - "Leading Collective Genius" in "Servant Leadership", ESV, 2014; Building Singapore Sportshub in "Living in Smart Cities", World Scientific, 2018.

In 2018 she was appointed as member of the Board of UNICON, the global consortium for university based executive education. From 2017 - 2019 Katharina served as Board member on the Board of Governors of the German European School Singapore.

Sameh Abadir is a Professor of Leadership and Negotiation at IMD. Abadir's fields of expertise are negotiation, conflict management, crisis management, and leadership. Before his academic career, he served in the Egyptian Special Forces and was an executive at a large multinational, and his military and corporate experience brings a unique perspective to his teaching.

Abadir says everything is subject to negotiation in the modern business world, so negotiation skills are vital – but managers often fall into some common traps. These include being overoptimistic, overconfident, or arrogant, and going into negotiations believing that you have to reach a deal. People who assume they have to close a deal set themselves up for a poor deal, he argues. Another mistake is to think that negotiation is a zero-sum game in which one side wins and the other loses, which misses the point that the process is about increasing the size of the pie and can therefore have a win-win outcome. Some negotiators also make the error of believing that the other party is out to get them, whereas both sides are quite reasonably looking to create and capture value.

In crisis management situations, leaders need a team with a range of skills, including not just people who are innately smart but also those who have made the behavioral choice to be emotionally smart by being kind and humble. In crisis negotiations, he says, you need a team that’s able to combine being confident, humble, smart, and kind, all at the same time.

Abadir believes the role of a leader has changed fundamentally, and that those who fail to grasp this are likely to be under the erroneous illusion that they are in control. Vertical hierarchical organizational structures have given way to complex systems in which people are working in teams in different locations around the globe and communicating in a language that is not their mother tongue, so the old way of giving orders on the shop floor has gone. Leaders therefore have to accept that they cannot control everything and find a new way of managing.

Abadir advises companies on negotiations and runs negotiation workshops in English, French and Arabic. He has recently directed custom programs for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Jerónimo Martins, ArcelorMittal, and Merck, and is Co-Director of IMD's signature Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) and Negotiating for Value Creation (NVC) open programs.

He is also Chairman of his family business, which is based in Egypt with operations across the Middle East and Africa.

Prior to joining IMD in 2018, he was an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD for 15 years. He was previously an executive at Sodexo, one of the world's largest multinational corporations, and served in the Egyptian Special Forces between 1985 and 1988.

Selected publications

Toolkit for strategic leading through a crisis (I by IMD, 2022)

Questions to ask as you prepare to negotiate a deal (I by IMD, 2022)

Negotiation techniques for a global dealmaking frenzy (I by IMD, 2021)

The two roles leaders must play in a crisis (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)

The Innovative Business School: Mentoring Today’s Leaders for Tomorrow’s Global Challenges (Routledge, 2020)

From safety, through sustainability to stewardship (FFI Practitioner, 2020)

Bicultural managers leading multicultural teams (International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies, 2020)

e-Negotiations: Networking and Cross-Cultural Business Transactions (Routledge, 2012)

Recognition

INSEAD Best Program Director award (2018)

INSEAD Best Professor award (2018)

Education

MBA

Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po)

PhD (Economics)

University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne