a guide to what we offer - ycn · a guide to what we offer coaching groups — designed and...

You Can Now Since 2001

A guide to what we offer

Artwork by Andy Rementer

2019 Guide

1. Our learning network2. Membership and core learning programme3. First Time Leaders4. Coaching Groups5. Live Learning6. Visits7. Tailored partnerships


Established in 2001, YCN (You Can Now) is a learning network.

We help creatively driven organisations to build the capabilities they need to enrich their teams and acheive their objectives.

The organisations we partner with come in all shapes and sizes; from big global retailers like adidas and Lush to fast-growing tech stars like WeTransfer and Farfetch, amazing charities like the NSPCC and Scope to creative consultancies like forpeople and Koto. And we engage throughout their teams; from the leaders at the top, to their newest hires — changing behaviour and driving performance in motivating and connected ways.

This document shares an overview of our learning programmes that your teams can access on a cross-organisational basis, and some of the more tailored ways we can work, and learn, together.

Our learning network


Membership provides your team with self-directed access to a weekly in-person learning programme, digital platform and the support of a community of like-minded learners. An ongoing relationship with our central team ensures engage-ment around individual learning goals, participation in the most relevant parts of the programme and the transfer of new techniques and behaviours back to work.

Testimonials

“YCN helps keep professional development front of mind among my team, and connects us with like-minds facing similar challenges.“ Sara Stark, Dishoom

“Our team can shape the programme around their diaries and their individ-ual learning goals.” Romilly Martin, Ennismore

“A massively popular benefit among our team, showing that we’re putting their personal development front and centre.” Rob Arbuthnot. Red Bull

“Consistent access to quality sessions that transfer learning back into our business.” Trevor Cairns, Love

“YCN furthers the learning of our team and broadens their individual un-derstanding of the world. YCN helps the team think differently about its challenges..YCN is a great launch into networking, and building relationships through-out the team.”Jowey Roden, Koto

Learning among like minds. Our community


Unlimited access to an ongoing learning programme

Talks. Mixing talks, panels and other gatherings where perspectives and inspirations are shared; at the start or end of the day, and over 90 minutes or so.

Roundtables. These tightly curated two hour sessions enable peer-led, facilitated knowledge sharing around specialisms and topics of common interest.

Workshops. Delivered over two hours, a half or full day —these sessions bring goups of up to 15 people together for energising sessions around key topics.

• Resilience• Negotiation• Consumer insights• Purposeful praise• Listening• Authentic presenting

• Design thinking• Unconscious bias• Brand purpose• Storytelling• Strategic thinking• Project management

• Coaching mindsets• Visualising data• Digital leadership• Facilitation• Owning feedback• The art of gathering

Popular topics in 2018


First Time Leaders is a unique 12 week accelerator programme to provide newly promoted managers with vital, practical and immediately applicable skills. As well as setting up participants for success within their own teams, the cross-organisational nature of the programme enables sharing of experiences, net-working, and learning from supportive peers.


Six core areas of focus

Your Management StyleStepping up involves self-awareness, as people will respond to your style differ-ently. How can we adapt to get the best out of them?

The Power of FeedbackMemorably providing, and meaningfully pulling in qual-ity feedback from different directions has never been a more vital skill for managers.

ResilienceBeing resilient doesn’t mean being totally immune to stress, but being better able to bounce back as a team during testing times.

Coaching MindsetsImprove your leadership style with direct reports, through better listening and questioning. Enable others to be the best they can be.

Goals and PerformanceInvolving those around us in the process of setting individual and team goals is fundamental to the process of making them stick.

Motivation and ImpactUnderstanding the situations and influences that motivate those around us, and their relationship to how we moti-vate ourselves.

Each of the six workshop sessions is delivered by a facilitator from YCN and an external subject expert — bringing their own unique first-person perspective on the topic.

Practitioner led learning

Liz Whitney spent 16 years working in marketing, design and digital product development agencies and today supports creatively driven leaders as a coach and consultant.

Scott Morrison began his career in advertising before moving client side, heading up marketing for brands including Levis and Diesel. Today he runs the The Boom! and recently co-authored Creative Superpowers.

Hilary Gallo is a coach and author, helping people to purposefully work to their strengths. His best-selling book ‘The Power of Soft’ will shortly be followed by a brand new publication titled ‘Fear Hack’.

— Punchy digital resources, recom-mended reading and action commitments complement the in-person sessions.

— Over 12 weeks participants experience six, half-day, practitioner led workshops-bookended with kick-off and wrap and review sessions.

— Participants join a 12 strong, cross organisational learning group for the dura-tion of the programme.

— The programme provides a rich con-text for connecting and learning with peers and with a strong alumni network too.

Programme overview


About Hilary GalloHilary started his career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance before becoming Commercial Director at Accenture and Capgemini. Today his focus is on enabling people, and supporting leaders and organisations facing change. As a mediator and executive coach, his emphasis is helping people to purposefully work to their strengths. His best-selling book ‘The Power of Soft’ will shortly be followed by a brand new publication titled ‘Fear Hack’.

Pictured: Hilary Gallo photographed by Rob Parfitt at Ennismore Sessions House in Clerkenwell.


Coaching Groups — designed and delivered with coach and author Hilary Gallo — provide a curated and transformative space for founders, execs and other sen-ior leaders to build self-awareness, while sharing and solv-ing their most urgent challenges. Participants join a cross-organisational group with up to ten members. Groups meets every six weeks for a four-hour session, facilitated by Hilary. In this high-quality and confidential learning space; leadership, business and broader challenges are tabled for discussion and col-laborative exploration. At the close of each session actions are com-mitted to, and accountability created. Each group is tightly curated to reflect career stage, and to avoid competition.

Who joins Coaching Groups?Participants are drawn from the top of organisations, large and small — global businesses like The Guardian, Secret Escapes and Farfetch, fast-growth creative practices like Koto and SODA and cultural institu-tions like the V&A. All are open in their mindset and outlook, with cur-rent groups curated for founders, execs, department heads and newly promoted leaders.

“What began feeling self-indulgent has become the most protected part of my diary.”

“Time on the business, not in the business.”

Testimonials from participants:

“I’ve learned as much from hearing other peoples’ challenges decon-structed as I have from discussing my own.”

“Truly motivating learning, and a great new group of allies”

“Hilary artfully directs the conversa-tion — drawing out decisions and making them stick.”

“I leave each and every session with a notebook full of things to follow through on, and commitment to put into action”


Pictured: Hilary Gallo photographed by Rob Parfitt at Ennismore Sessions House in Clerkenwell.


Our Live Learning programme puts your business challenges at the centre of rich and collaborative learning experience, bringing key members of your team together with curated groups of crea-tive practitioners and subject matter experts.

Value is returned back into the business at speed in the form of:

• New ideas, solutions to problems and prototypes with action plans for next steps attached to them.

• Enhanced capabilities among your team in idea generation, collaborative working, proto-typing, validating, business modelling and more.

How it works:

• Having identified and defined the challenge we bring together the right mix of people from your team with external groups, practitioners and other specialists — curated to reflect their unique relevance to the challenge. Past groups have included user experience designers, psychologists, students and recent graduates, semioticians, founders, brand strategists, developers and visualisers.

• Challenges can relate to product and service innovation, new business models, brand and marketing challenges or anything in-between.

• The group works collectively on the challenge to a fixed set of deliverables, over a fixed pe-riod of time — combining structured in-person workshops with remote research and reflec-tion in advance and in-between. From a one-day workshop, to fuller engagements reflecting ongoing projects and challenges.

• Live Learning offers a fast and energising way to unleash the collective creativity of your own team, tap into the ideas and expertise of outside specialists and super-size skills for future work challenges.

To discuss a Live Learning challenge contact the YCN team on +44 (0)20 7033 2140 or email [email protected]

Cubitts How can we better define our purpose as a business?

AXA How can we diversify the digital products and propositions at the heart of the AXA + platform?

Lush How can we re-think the way we merchan-dise in-store for a new generation of shoppers?

Some past Live Learning challenges:

adidas How can we redesign the selection pro-cess at the heart of our leadership programme to ensure a higher calibre of participants?

Red Bull How can we link into the movement for focus at work, and create credible brand experi-ences that support it?

Action for Children How can we identify and alleviate pain points within our supporter journey?


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Visits see us bring the outside in, delivering tailoredsessions to teams anywhere, in focussed and ener-gising formats. Whether a one-off full-day workshop or a series of bite-sized sessions, the goal is building capability and driving behavioural change in relation to key business challenges, drawing from expertise across our network.

Key formats for sessions

2hr— An energising and focussed two-hour workshop session on a variety of topics for a group of up to 18.

1/2— Practitioner led, and digging deeper over a structured half-day workshop session for groups of up to 18.

— We facilitate a roundtable discussion around a core theme or topic, bringing in an external expert to kick-start conversation.

— Full day workshops can be delivered to groups of up to 18 on key topics, and aligned to internal challenges.

— Single speakers and panels can be designed and moder-ated on point to key topics and internal opportunities.

For retail property PLC Hammerson we’ve organised a series of knowledge-share panel sessions delivered at their Kings Place HQ, to bring together senior management with internal and external stakeholders.

— Some formats can be adapted and delivered virtually using ZOOM to reach groups of any size anywhere.

Some recent client examples:

To give people throughout the business more confidence, capability and creativity to continu-ally suggest new ideas — we delivered a series of workshops on idea generation.

We are programming conversational panels for retail managers, that focus on creating more WOW customer service moments. Most recently learning was shared by WAH’s Sharmadean Reid and Cubitts founder Tom Broughton.

Setting out to create better understanding of the value in customer insights among an internal creative team at Innocent, we programmed a series of 90 minute workshops.

Was there a positive return on investment?

Was their a measurable impact on performance?

Did behaviour change as a result?

Did knowledge transfer occur?

Did the learners enjoy the experience?


Workshops. Sessions are designed around specific behavioural goals, and typically run as a series.

Speakers and panels.Visits can be facilitated with topic experts and industry leaders, on-point to your team’s goals.

Pledges and actions. Emphasis on knowledge transfer and application is fundamental to visits.

Evaluating impact


Some recent tailored programmes and partnerships:

Tailored programmes and partnerships. We can partner on a tailored capability building pro-gramme, that fits specific challenges and priorities, or that supports an existing internal programme in place. Recent partnerships include helping adidas to develop leaders globally through meaningful digital engagement, and enabling SecretEscapes to reward and upskill high-potentials throughout Europe.

Since 2015 we’ve designed and delivered a digi-tally driven leadership development programme; connecting an annual global cohort of future leaders with expert peers; all based around topic specific ‘Skills Gyms’.

The fast-growing file-sharing supremos have a growing band of young, ambitious marketers working together in their Amsterdam based HQ. We’re working with them to develop their strategic thinking, benchmarked against a series of ongoing commercial partnerships.

For AB InBev we’ve produced and delivered a global programme of thought leadership around the future of digital commerce, with sessions to-date delivered in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels and New York.

This bespoke programme blends in-person sessions with missions, curated digital resources and recommended reading to motivate and mobilise curated groups of high-potentials across Europe.

We’re supporting the burgeoning snack brand as they look to develop the next generation of lead-ers within the business. A branded programme of in-person and digital learning sees cross func-tional teams come together to solve real-world problems alongside external experts.

Our work with AXA focuses on instilling cus-tomer centricity throughout the UK marketing, brand and sales functions —by drawing in best practice, new thinking and inspiration of what others are doing from outside of the business.

Pictured: Members of the WeTransfer marketing team as part of an residential session at Do Farm in Cardigan Bay.


Capability and skills auditsWe can help to identify the most important capabilities needed at an individual and collective level among teams — in relation to specific organisational and performance challenges. These audits typically combine surveys and individual and group conversations; with the op-portunity to benchmark before and after programmes.

72 Rivington StreetLondonEC2A 3AY

+44 (0)20 7033 [email protected]

Want to learn [email protected]+44 (0)20 7033 2140


a guide to what we offer - ycn · a guide to what we offer coaching groups — designed and...

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