|
|||
|
|
|
||||||
|
Slicing, Not Slashing
In a break from past recessions, many organizations are maintaining their leadership-development efforts in spite of the troubled economy.
When organizations are engaging in furloughs, layoffs and other drastic measures to survive the recession, it may seem natural that leadership-development programs would be slashed or shuttered away, with plans to reintroduce them when the climate is better. That's not necessarily so this time around. While it may be true that organizations are cutting funding to leadership development, many appear to be using a scalpel, rather than a chainsaw. According to the 2008 Bersin & Associates Leadership Development Survey, a study of 400 organizations conducted last October by the Oakland, Calif.-based talent-management research firm, 40 percent of those polled said their spending on leadership development has remained the same, while about 36 percent of the organizations said their budgets were slated to increase this year. Kim Lamoureux, a principal analyst at Bersin & Associates, says she was surprised by the level of commitment companies were showing to leadership development. "This was not a small survey population," she says. "But I think, if you look at training budgets overall, what that is saying is that the training dollars may be decreasing, but they may be shifting their priorities to leadership." At first blush, it may sound contrarian to concentrate funding on leadership-development initiatives during an economic downturn, when every penny helps to shore up the bottom line. In fact, now may be precisely the time to preserve the leadership chain in an organization. "This is not the time to have a bunker mentality," says Bill Pelster >, a principal at the Seattle office of Deloitte Consulting. Compared to previous recessions he's worked through, he says, "this is the first one where talent and leadership development are still being discussed." < Pelster says senior executives are concentrating on what their organizations will look like 12 to 18 months from now, so the cash for development is still flowing for key executives. "They know that this will end and, at some point, the need to expand or grab talent and market share is going to be there." However, while organizations may be maintaining some commitment to leadership development, some experts say much of that effort may be concentrated too heavily on the top executives in the organization. Such a narrow focus on development may not be the healthiest tack for an organization in the long run, they say. Top executives leave, and there may not be an internal candidate to step into the larger shoes. While an organization can hire from the outside, that doesn't always guarantee a fit in the role or with the company's culture. In April, Bersin & Associates and the Center for Creative Leadership, an executive- education provider based in Greensboro, N.C., published a joint study called High-Impact Succession Management. The study polled 220 senior human resource leaders responsible for succession planning as well as 100 additional senior executives about their companies' succession-management strategies. More than half of those surveyed reported that succession management occurs only at the senior level in their companies, and fewer than 40 percent said mid-level managers were included in succession-planning development. High-Tech, Highly Selective Jim Concelman, vice president of leadership development at Development Dimensions International, based in Bridgeville, Pa., says organizations continue to view leadership development as a necessary investment, but they're pickier about where to invest, both in terms of the executive candidates and the development vehicles, such as virtual training, coaching or blended learning. "What I'm seeing savvy HR and talent managers do is to say, 'There's a new world order out here now . . . and so we're going to marshal our resources,' " he says. The conundrum facing talent managers, he says, is that they must demonstrate that they're accomplishing more with fewer resources. Technological advances such as Webinars, virtual classrooms, simulations and even private social networking (often done via Microsoft SharePoint), can extend the reach of training to bring together leaders from Singapore to Scranton, saving time and precious dollars. One company,PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global professional-services firm based in New York, blends a variety of tech tools with more low-tech approaches such as one-on-one coaching, self-diagnostics and workshops to further its leadership-development program. According to Kathy Kavanagh, PwC's managing director for learning and education, the company began to concentrate on ways to deliver customized development programs closer to the work environment a few years ago. The company wanted a stronger marriage between leadership development and everyday work experience, particularly for senior executives, and it wanted to scale access to leadership development to other staff. "The more customized an experience can be to an individual, and the closer it is to the work that [he or she does] every day, the more effective it is," she says. Kavanagh says tools such as videoconferences, virtual classrooms and Webcasts are a cost-effective way to scale access to leadership development, and in the current economy, PwC has re-evaluated where it's dedicating resources for face-to-face training compared to virtual classrooms and the like. "We're not excluding people or limiting access, just seeking innovative and more cost-effective ways to deliver programs," she says. "The foundation of what we're trying to do to build better leaders hasn't changed." Kavanagh says there have been technological initiatives that haven't panned out, although they seemed like worthwhile experiments at the time. For example, a brief pilot program using the virtual world called "Second Life" was practically dead on arrival. "I think it was interesting for people, but ultimately not something we would take on on a much broader scale," she says. That experience hasn't dampened Kavanagh's enthusiasm for tailoring technology to meet training and development, though. Her department is currently experimenting with a pilot simulation in a PwC team environment through an online, multi-player game that is geared toward new hires. "If successful, this would serve as both a cost-effective way to give them the real experiences of a broad group of experienced professionals," she says, in addition to exposing new hires to the organization's culture. Most of PwC's simulations and pilot programs are developed through a combination of in-house and external expertise, says Kavanagh. Concelman says he anticipates that technology-based approaches to development will increase, driven by the heightened demand to cut costs. "It's critical to reduce costs, and even if you're investing more, you've still got to show that you can do more training for less money," he says. Low-Tech, Face-to-Face But while virtual instructors, online simulations and distance learning may be convenient and less expensive than a plane ticket and a weeklong stay at a workshop, they don't have the kind of stickiness that immersion in a face-to-face workshop can provide. "People are social learners," says Concelman. "That's why Web-based training has had low uptake, especially in leadership development." Lamoureux says another inherent problem with virtual learning is that employers sometimes rely too heavily on the always-available online content by purchasing courses and then failing to make them an integral part of a blended-learning program. Particularly in these days of leaner budgets and staff, she says, there's no such thing as "set it and forget it." "People are very busy, and they need to know that when they're spending their time on training, it's very relevant for them," she says. One technique that Lamoureux heralds is the "leaders teaching leaders" approach to training and development. Granted, she says, it's neither new nor high-tech, but it is highly effective if executed correctly, and it can be a comparatively inexpensive way to train leaders. "It actually becomes a real change-management tool," she says. "It's not just the impact on the learning, but I think it builds a whole different culture within the company." The keys to an effective leaders-teaching-leaders approach are maintaining a tight focus on the core messages being presented and having a commitment from the CEO toward the program's success. Lamoureux cites Hewlett-Packard, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based technology company, as a positive example of the program. "It started with the CEO, Mark Hurd, and then his executive staff delivered a program to the top 300 people in the company," she says. "After those 300 were trained, then [they] delivered the program to their employees." This so-called "cascading training" was both effective and comparatively inexpensive. "The company was able to get the key messages across consistently, and it eliminated the travel," she says. Steffen Landauer, vice president of leadership development at H-P, says the teaching technique has been at the company long before the current economic crisis -- in fact, the concept of leaders who mentor and teach other leaders is a cornerstone of the company's culture, dating back to the days of founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Landauer credits Marcela Perez de Alonso, H-P's executive vice president of human resources, with reinvigorating the initiative through specific programs such as "Leading for Results" and "Key Talent." Both were launched in 2007, before Landauer's arrival at H-P. By 2008, about 900 H-P leaders had participated in the programs. Landauer says the true benefit of the program is that it allows the company to put "an H-P-specific fingerprint on what we're teaching our leaders." The foundation of the company's initiative consists of two essential ingredients. First, core content must be conveyed, regardless of which business unit is delivering or receiving the messages. Second, there must be flexibility to allow each leader to customize those core messages for their business unit's culture. In order for any leadership program to be effective, however, Landauer says, the CEO must take an active interest in the modules, and the modules must align closely with the business priorities and the core messages. Under Landauer's watch, the company is planning to expand its Key Talent program this year by offering more content, and Hurd remains actively involved in the program's development, he says. "When you do leaders teaching leaders, you're dealing with an all-volunteer army," he says. "Nobody's going to have to hold a gun to their head and say, 'You have to go teach.' " At TSYS, a global technology company specializing in payment-processing systems, they don't hold a gun to the heads of their teachers, but they do offer a modest stipend. Based in Columbus, Ga., TSYS created a "Scholars Program" in which employees volunteer to teach a range of business, technical and behavioral courses, including leadership training. Those who are selected receive a daily stipend of $200 for each course they teach. The program has been in existence for several years, according to Shannon Gill, director of learning and development. Initially, she says, the company began offering technical courses to teach programming to staffers who needed to get up to speed quickly. However, the company quickly discovered a dual benefit: Homegrown instructors who have the imprimatur of management in the organization not only save the company money by cutting the need for outside consultants, but also become mentors for graduates of the class. Prospective teachers for the Scholars Program must apply, interview and have permission from their manager to attend training workshops. In some cases instructors are selected to teach DDI courses on subjects such as "Influential Leadership" or "Proactive Communication," for which they must be certified by DDI before they can teach the course. Even though TSYS -- which processes credit-card payments and includes banks among its clients -- has had to tighten its belt (like most other companies these days), the Scholars Program and a recent leaders-teaching-leaders offshoot have not been impacted, says Gill. The reason? They're inexpensive and they're effective. Last year, Gill says, the company delivered approximately 1,400 instructor-led courses to its nearly 8,000 employees. Of those, she says, more than a third of the courses were taught by Scholars. "It's the difference between $200 for a Scholar versus $2,300 for somebody from [an outside firm] to do it for us," she says. Good Time for Stretching Peter Cappelli, director of the Wharton School's Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania, faults companies for not making greater use of the leaders-teaching-leaders concept. "All this stuff was around in the '50s, so none of it is new," he says. "The issue is whether companies are . . . actually willing to put some resources behind these things, and I say, for the most part, no." While there may be exceptions, Cappelli says, these days most organizations seem to be in a rut caused by reacting to the uncertain economy, rather than planning for the future. "They're distracted, and they've got a bunch of other things that they're worried about," he says. "Developing people, in this context, is a low priority for them." Cappelli does see a silver lining in the bad economy in that "stretch assignments," which he says are an effective and practical method of leadership development, are especially relevant and effective now. "Seize the opportunity of having to do more with fewer people," he says. "You've laid off somebody at the director level, then a couple of the senior managers start splitting up some of those tasks, and taking on some of them as stretch assignments." As long as someone is there to "hold their hands a little bit," Cappelli says, they learn by doing, and the organization is helping to address potential succession gaps. "That's what I think [companies] ought to do, but I don't see a lot of [them doing it]," he says. Kavanagh says PwC is certainly using the rough economy to take advantage of leadership development. "We probably couldn't have a more fertile ground to cultivate, grow and change," she says. "Everything is kind of changing around us, so it's like being on shifting sand. The more adept our leaders are at changing and growing in a world full of ambiguity, the more successful they're going to be." Kavanagh says she thinks one of the more effective techniques any organization can use is about as low-tech as they come: a regular 20-minute conversation between a leader and a mentor who can guide and provide insight on a day-to-day basis. "That gets role-modeled over and over again in the organization, and pretty soon, it becomes part of the way people work," she says.
June 2, 2009 Copyright 2009© LRP Publications |
||||||
Print
Email
Write to the Editor
Reprints
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
© Copyright 2010 LRP Publications. All rights reserved.
|
||||