The second programme by the internationally renowned Duke Corporate Education (DUKE CE) on strategic thinking organized by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) held in Colombo recently proved to be an all-round success with the two day programme being oversubscribed and the organisers having to accommodate more participants than the originally planned number due to the overwhelming demand for the programme.
The programme which was specially designed for fast growing economies such as Sri Lanka saw management level officials from leading corporates in Sri Lanka including Softlogic Holdings PLC, Commercial Bank PLC, Hemas Holding PLC, Zillione Group of Companies, Ceylon Pencils Co. Ltd., Millennium IT, Peoples’ Bank, RAM Ratings Lanka, MAS Active, Commercial Credit Limited, Linea Aqua (Pvt) Limited, Abans Group, Pership Group, LOLC Micro Credit Limited and Sunshine Holdings PLC, who were inspired on how to invigorate their business strategy whilst becoming effective business leaders who inspire change across corporates.
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Speaking soon after the two day programme, Kanchana Silva, Vice President – Business Strategy & Projects of Zillione Group of Companies said the programme was boosted with excellent networking opportunities while being supplemented with world class facilitators.
“The CA Sri Lanka – DUKE CE Programme was one of the best executive training programmes that I have ever attended, and gave me new insights to the strategic thinking process,” Nishanthi Dias, Finance Manager of Ceylon Pencils Co Ltd said.
Adrian Perera - Managing Director - RAM Ratings Lanka said that the programme was ‘very well structured,’ while Erandi Wickramaarachchi, Chief Financial Officer of Softlogic Holdings PLC said that the programme was very good and the two foreign resource persons who conducted the programme was excellent.
“Overall, the workshop was very beneficial for me to reflect on certain matters and most importantly the programme helped me gain vast amounts of knowledge in decision making,” Dinesh Perera, Deputy Director of Abans Group said.
Perera’s sentiments were echoed by Chamil Fernando of Abans Engineering (Pvt) Ltd, who emphasized that the two resource persons, Tony and Nikhil conducted a valuable workshop which helped him enhance his knowledge. “They were practical and used very clear examples to help us understand difficult areas,” Fernando said.
Dhanesh Ranatunga of Linea Aqua (Pvt) Limited said that the programme was excellent as it got participants to engage in all topics, while Manager, Outreach Development of LOLC Micro Credit said that the programme delivery was excellent.
“The programme helped me to think about the role of a differentiator, while changing the game and being able to add value to the change,” said Sean Silva of Pership Group.
Deidre Kandappa, Head of Human Resources of Linea Aqua noted that the trainers were very well conversant with the subject area and the fact that they got the participants to interact across all areas was an added boost to the programme. The work done by the participants during the programme was an endorsement of their learnings,” Kandappa added.
The CA Sri Lanka-Duke CE Strategic Thinking programmewas conducted by Dr. O’Driscoll, Executive Director of DUKE CE, who commands an 18-year industry career, having held leadership positions with Nortel Networks and IBM and Prof. Nikhil Raval, Managing Director of Duke CE India Ltd., who comes with close to two decades of combined experience in Corporate, Consulting and Academia.
In October last year, CA Sri Lanka introduced Duke CE for the first time to Sri Lanka by conducting a programme on ‘Strategic Leadership: Leading Effective Execution in Uncertain Times’.
Duke CE has been ranked the world’s number one in Custom Executive Education for 11 consecutive years by UK Financial Times and Business Week since 2003 to 2013.
