How to Design an Effective System for Developing Managers and Executives - Maxine Dalton

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and showing them how they can improve or learn new skills.

      4. Define and communicate the role of the manager in development and orient the manager to the program.

      5. Help participants write and use a development plan.

      6. Make the program accountable by defining the outcome measures that capture the program purpose and evaluate the program against those measures.

      If you are new to the field of human resources development or at the beginning of your own design effort, we intend that the model be used sequentially and cumulatively. Each step leads to the next. The program designer has to consider the impact of each step on what has gone before and what will follow. For example, you will see that buy-in and support (Step 1) is built on accountability (Step 6). Accountability is built on clarity of program purpose (Step 2), and so forth.

      If you are an experienced HR development practitioner or if you are trying to evaluate and improve an existing program, we offer the model as a checklist, a way to review each of your components to determine if the sense of purpose, implementation, and accountability flow in a logical way from the business need that is driving the program toward the outcomes that the business wants.

      We suggest that you think of the six steps as you would instructions for building a model airplane. Lay out all of the pieces first. Make sure all of the parts are there. Read through the instructions before you start. Think about how the parts fit together.

      Writing about development planning presents language problems. What do we call the target of our development efforts—the person whom we hope will develop? And what do we call that person, key in the development process, who used to be called your manager, or boss, or supervisor, but who may in the modern organization do very little traditional managing?

      We have adopted a convention that we think will be clear. The person whose development we are planning we will call the participant—whether an engineer or salesperson, a manager with a formal hierarchy, or a team leader with limited traditional supervisory responsibility; or whether an executive somewhere on the rungs of the executive ladder—but not so high as to be the “boss of all bosses.” The individual with administrative responsibility for the development of this participant we will call the manager, again recognizing that our usage may not reflect the complexities of the authority relationship in the modern organization, and that in using manager we may be referring to a person with no formal subordinates or with thousands.

      We also want to alert you to our use of the word program. As will be clear in this report, we want to present development as a process and not as an event. Programs of development occur as a result of many interlocking steps and events over time, each building on what has gone before. Developmental programs may be punctuated by events, such as receiving feedback in a formal 360-degree-feedback activity, but that event is not the program. We will use the term program to refer to the entire process of development, and terms like step, event, or activity to refer to program components.

      There is yet another caveat about the use of language. Throughout this report we refer to the human resources professional as the person who designs and conducts the development program. We know that there is a subgroup of professionals within the HR function called the human resources development (HRD) professional. However, not all HR professionals who practice development may hold that title if they are in smaller companies or perform a variety of HR functions. Therefore, we refer to the person who does the design and development as the HR professional.

      Whatever words we use, we ask your translation to any form that will help you further the process of development planning in your organization.

       STEP 1: Find and Use Organizational Support for Creating a Process, Not an Event

      Finding support for creating a process of development involves helping the organization understand and thus commit to a program of development that acknowledges the reality of how adults learn, grow, and change over time. Adults learn what they need to know. This means that a program of development must be tied to business need and the day-to-day work of the organization. The HR professional must find support for building a program of development around these two basic requirements. As the following discussion illustrates, this is not as easy as it sounds.

      Executive development programs abound in business and government today. The establishment of a program is often triggered by some untoward organization event: Attitude survey results show that the troops are unhappy with development opportunities; the “good” people are leaving; when an opening comes up, there is nobody in the pipeline, so you have to go outside; there is a high failure rate among high-potentials; perhaps the direction of the business is changing and executives are needed who have a “new skill set”; or maybe there is simply an amorphous wish to “do something for our people.”

      Whatever the catalyst, when the HR professional receives the call to design a development program, the client organization often has a preconceived idea of what it wants: “Give us a training program that will solve these problems.” This is a seductive invitation—most HR professionals can design a training class that will hold people’s attention, receive high ratings, and not interfere too much with business as usual. Unfortunately, it is not likely that any single class will cause much change in the behavior of the participants.

      Training programs may deliver content knowledge. They may increase self-awareness. They may unfreeze attitudes. They may model or describe a particular process or point of view. They may provide a wonderful opportunity to meet colleagues in the field. But the training program is, by itself, unlikely to provide much that is significant enough to be cited by executives as critically important in their growth or as having had much impact on business results (McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison, 1988).

      A central theme of CCL research, replicated time and again, is that development takes place on the job far more often than in the classroom. And although development happens whether we plan it or not, the good news from our research is that we can increase the odds that it will happen more quickly and in the needed directions.

      To design an integrative process rather than a singular event, job experiences must be built into the development program. We offer this, however, in the face of the fact that a training program is often the “tool of choice” for a number of attractive reasons: It can be handed over to the training department; it requires little disruption of the ebb and flow of daily work; it doesn’t take much of the manager’s or the executive’s time; and it doesn’t demand that either of them do much that they are not already well-equipped to do. We believe, however, that doing development planning properly means that it is necessary to integrate experience into the development program.

      Where does the energy to support designing a process come from? First, it comes from tapping into the natural flow that drives the business toward results. Our key principle here is this: You, as an HR professional, can never overestimate how much the business manager is focused on getting results. Tie development into that central purpose and the demands for sound development programs will exceed your expectations. Our experiences have identified a number of approaches that work.

      Effective development programs are interventions, not events, so even though a program may in your mind be tied to results of unquestionable value, starting with a developmentally friendly manager makes your task easier. It will allow for building a pilot program, demonstrating success to the rest of the organization, and breaking free of the short-term, one-shot training model. Developmentally friendly managers come in all shapes and sizes, ages, and functions, and usually they are well-known within the organization: High-potentials want to work with them; they export top-notch people to other areas; they believe that people produce results. For example:

      One HR professional told us that he was fortunate enough to be able to introduce and pilot his program with the CEO and the CEO’s direct reports. To demonstrate his support for development, the CEO wrote up his reflections about the experience in the company newsletter, even outlining his own developmental goals

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