Urgency for Leadership Development is Growing

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Sean Murray

Leadership development has long been considered a discretionary expense.  During economic downturns it is often one of the first budget line-items to be cut.  However, there was a different feeling this time around.  As we entered the recession in 2008 and 2009  there was hope, and some evidence, that  companies had learned from past downturns.  Eliminating leadership development only left them further behind when the economy did start picking up again, as it inevitably does.

In the Wall Street Journal last week, an article reports that training budgets over the past two years have been down 11%, but now there is signs that it is coming back.  It appears that the companies that did scale back training are now scrambling to catch up:

Already, some companies say they are finding they don’t have the managers to spearhead new projects or step in for departing executives, a problem as companies try to shift into growth mode.

The article goes on to report that companies like Amway and Rockwell Collins are re-launching leadership programs that were cancelled during the downturn.  The goal is to accelerate the development of internal talent while they hire experienced managers from the outside to meet the increased demand to fill vacancies.

Unfortunately the article does not contrast the experience of Amway and Rockwell with one or two companies that continued to invest in leadership development at a steady or increasing pace over the past two years.  Companies like O’Neal Steel remained committed to training and entered 2010 with a strong talent pipeline and engaged employees.  These organizations are better suited to take advantage of the opportunities for growth in 2010 and 2011.

As for the other companies, well, hopefully they learned their lesson; cutting spending on leadership development is more expensive in the long-term.

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Alignment of Learning to Business Goals

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Sean Murray

Has the recession forced organizations to more closely align learning objectives to business goals? A new study by CLO Magazine surveying over 1,500 senior learning and development executives found:

“90 percent of CLOs believe their learning will be more aligned with organizational business objectives this year. That’s music to some executives’ ears.”

Jim Gillece, AlliedBarton’s senior vice president and chief people officer, talks in the article about the importance of well-defined leadership competencies, at every level of the organization, as key to bridging the gap.  I think this is a good and necessary step, but it doesn’t go far enough.   All learning can eventually be reduced to individual learning.  Thus, each individual must understand how the new skills and behaviors obtained through training or on-the-job learning link to the personal business goals of the learner.   We call this “line of sight” for the learner and it is a critical piece that is missing from much of the training I see today in the corporate world. 

“Line of Sight” for a learner is really the alignment of individual learning goals with business goals.  The tool we recommend for establishing Line of Sight is a Success Map.  The Success Map clearly defines the learning goals for a training event or activity, then links those goals to on-the-job applications, and finally links the application to measurable business outcomes.  If you can achieve this with every learner in your training, you will be well on your way to establishing true Alignment in your learning organization.

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Feedback is a Gift

Posted on February 3, 2010 by Sean Murray

“Get a feedback loop and listen to it. … When people give you feedback, cherish it and use it.”

- Randy Pausch (1960 – 2008) was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and a best-selling author, who achieved worldwide fame for his speech The Last Lecture, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and having only a few months to live.

Most people, by now, know the story of Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture.    The book was a best-seller and the video of the lecture itself has been viewed by over 11 million people on YouTube.  The entire lecture is a powerful and moving presentation on achieving your dreams and living a fullfilling life. 

Being that I’m in the busines of helping organizations develop leaders, I found the lecture fascinating on another level – namely the insight it provides us into one man’s struggle to achieve his goals, to continually grow and develop as a person and to live a happy life.  The popularity of the book and the lecture lead me to believe that the insights shared by Randy do not apply to him only, and are really fundamental to the human condition.  We can learn from these insights and apply them to leadership development programs at our organizations.

One thing that Randy discusses is the importance of feedback.  During his childhood and into his college days, Randy had little use for feedback.  Like many of us, he didn’t initially see the value in feedback.  But at some point in our lives and careers we hit what Randy calls a “brick wall.”  This is a barrier that temporarily prevents us from achieving our goals.  Randy has a great attitude about these barries; ” Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”  Well, in order to break through these brick walls, we often need feedback from others to tell us what’s missing or what we need to do differently.  During graduate school, a professor did just that for Randy, helping him to see how his attitude was holding him back.

Through the course of his life, Randy came to appreciate feedback so much so that he would seek out what he called “feedback loops.”  These are processes that give us the feedback and information we need to continually improve and develop as leaders. 

Contrast Randy’s attitude and feelings about feedback with what we sometimes encounter with leaders who are receiving 360-feedback.   Through our leadership development practice at RealTime Performance, we deliver thousands of 360-feedback reports every year to companies like Emerson, Nordstrom, FedEx, Chubb and Johnson & Johnson.  Although many leaders do view 360 as a positive excercise, there is always that group of managers who perceive it to be a negative experience right from the start.

These employees mistakenly consider receiving feedback an unpleasant exercise to be avoided if possible and minimized if absolutely necessary.  Successful leaders like Randy understand that feedback is a special gift because it is something we can’t give ourselves.   We can go out and buy ourselves a watch or new clothes, but we can’t give ourselves the knowledge of how we are perceived by others unless we ask. 

Furthermore, the people who invest their time to provide us with feedback are often taking on a risk.  When someone delivers feedback, they risk damaging the relationship, especially if the feedback is critical or hits on a touchy subject.  Feedback comes at a price to the feedback-giver as well.  That’s why, feedback truly is a gift.

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The Enterprise of the Future: What Does it Mean for Training?

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Sean Murray

ibmIBM interviewed over 1,000 CEOs and asked them what the enterprise of the future will look like.  What IBM discovered, and recently published in a study,  is that future organizations will be even more dependent on collaborative global teams to drive innovation.  In the opening letter, IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano says:

“A focus on innovation works. That is also evident in this year’s study results. Those of you who are making the boldest plays — pursuing the most global, collaborative and disruptive business model innovation — are outperforming your peers.”

The study identifies several key trends that will shape the enterprise of the future.  These trends are fascinating from a leadership development perspective because they give us insight into the skills and capabilities required of successful future leaders:

  • Change is accelerating.  Technology is driving change, but the gap between the pace of change and the ability of the organization to manage change is accelerating even faster.  This means future leaders must not only embrace change, but recognize that change will increase throughout their careers.  For training departments, it is no longer enough to offer a series of courses or learning events.  Employees require learning environments where self-directed learning can occur throughout one’s career.
  • Collaboration is driving innovation.  Forty percent (40%) of organizations are evolving their enterprise business models to be more collaborative.  The ability to collaborate with others, especially on global and virtual teams will drive future success for leaders.  This trend is increasing the importance of developing emotional intelligent leaders who can effectively work with others to achieve results.
  • Global integration is increasing.  Businesses are reconfiguring around global integration.  Work is naturally migrating to the locales where it is most cost-effectively produced.  Successful organizations are taking advantage of this on a global scale by integrating their business across geographic and functional boundaries.  For leaders to be successful in this environment they must enhance their cultural and organizational understanding and address challenges with a global business mind-set.  This trend is increasing the importance of inclusion in the workplace.  Global leaders value diverse opinions, backgrounds and ideas.    

Taken together, these trends paint a picture of the enterprise of the future, which IBM describes having five characteristics:

  1. Hungary for change.
  2. Innovative beyond customer imagination
  3. Globally integrated
  4. Disruptive by nature
  5. Genuine, not just generous

Our challenge as leadership development professionals is to create environments and tools that help employees gain the critical leadership skills to be successful in the enterprise of the future.  In order to do this, we need to practice continuous process improvement and apply these prinicples to our learning departments.  By measuring our results, holding our learners and ourselves accountable and constantly looking for incremental improvements, training departments will evolve over time to effectively support the future enterprise. 

The 5A’s Framework is a great tool to use when assessing your training departments current level of effectiveness, and to guide you as you transform your department to meet the learning challenges of the future.

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