A: Whoa! Stop! You’re not really saying that your people are good “because they’ve been trained,” are you?

Because unless you train wives in Stepford, or inject trainees with some virus that rewrites their DNA, or do some voodoo magic during your sessions, no one can MAKE someone good through training!

Of course, you know this. I know you know this because I’ve seen you remind trainers and consultants of this fact whenever one shared his or her success statistics with you. OK, so in your quest to master your domain, you conveniently forget that training doth not a paragon make, and you’re now realizing that you’ve over-invested in training. C’est la vie, we all get a little blinded by the beauty of our own plans now and then.

So what now? Here are the steps to laying out a truly effective development program:

1. Stop by finance and say hi. Stop by the executive suite and say hi. Visit a few operators; say hi. Get to know as many people in as many departments as possible. Do this way more than you think you “should.”
2. Take stock of your talent. Not your processes; your talent. There are a lot of moving parts to development, including training, coaching, mentoring, lateral job rotations, special projects, high-potential programs, promotions… and these are just the organic elements that do not account for the impact of strategic changes such as mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPOs, corporate restructuring, new product lines or new lines of business, new plants and other significant cap ex, all of which can have a big impact on development efforts and should be accounted for when putting together an integrated talent solution. To know if you’re rolling out the right pieces in the right order, you’ve got to assess your talent. I mean your actual people. How well rounded are your executives? What role do people on your management teams play? What are the true capabilities of your younger workers? (I.e., who are the strategic thinkers? Who keeps things moving forward? Etc.)
3. Assess your culture. I’ve seen plenty of organizations where people say all the right things (“We want to be a learning organization!”) without having the foggiest idea what it takes to get there, let alone what impact that will have on how business is run. While doing the talent audit, take time to also get a handle on what your organization is capable of as an organization, and how development efforts will need to get rolled out to ensure their adoption.
4. Share the results with top decision makers, and let them know what you are doing with the information. Tell them when you anticipate being done with step #6, and what preliminary budget you are thinking about for step #4.
5. Set a budget for development. You’re going to want it all, we all know that, but resources are limited. The talent audit (aka, organizational talent assessment, environmental scan) you did in step #1 is only as good as what you do with it, and without some kind of budget, you won’t get very far!
6. Brainstorm plan options. Armed with the talent audit and budget, you should be able to determine the best use of your funds across all the various development options. Also, you should be able to spot some low-cost options that will help you extend your resources. A good plan creates “pull through” interest that builds on itself.
7. Pick one or two alternative courses of action, and build cases for them. Do the research needed to ensure that you are on the right track. Study the risks of your chosen approach(es), and build a picture of what success looks like. If you’re in a large organization, get together with someone who knows what the letters NPV stand for (hint: they’re in finance) and build a business case for training. Get help answering the question: “How will we measure success?“ This help should come in the form of outside experts and future program participants. (Hint: “I enjoyed this session” is not a good survey question.)
8. Present to the decision makers and operators. If they push back, don’t fight. Listen. No one likes to be bullied, and people will often reject good ideas out of spite if they feel those ideas are being crammed down their throats. You did make friends with these people in Step #1, right?
9. Confirm the decision to move forward.
10. Stop thinking, start doing.
11. Measure your impact. Assume nothing; call participants 1, 3, and 6 months after their involvement and ask what, if anything, has stuck. If you use a survey in this step, augment it with personal calls–you need to hear from people first hand!

Like a great amplifier, the list of things to do to ensure a great development program goes to eleven. But unlike Nigel Tufnel, something tells me that you’ll know how to use all the numbers. Good luck!

Posted under Q&A, Coaching & Consulting, Lists