Thoughts on Employee Development

I was recently contacted by Kyle Lagunas of Software Advice, the author of this article on employee development, on my thoughts regarding his piece. Kyle lists increasing employee engagement/morale, increase employee performance, and improve retention rates as (the?) three keys to success in developing internal leaders. I think these are three generally solid goals yes, but I would add to them.

Kyle cites the identification of goals for development of internal leadership talent in his first point on increasing employee engagement and morale. This is true: Goals are the hallmark upon which the success of any improvement effort is based. I would add that those goals must be measurable and sensible at the start. The field of professional development pursuit, like many others, is littered with failed programs, partly due to unclear and/or unattainable goals. There probably isn't a single person who hasn't had an experience where sky-high goals buttressed by good intentions killed forward progress. Measurable goals are also part and parcel of the capital P-I Performance Improvement model in organizations.

My second point is this: I think that for leadership development programs to be effective, companies must really think about the feedback and feedback mechanisms that may or may not be in place to let the employees being developed know where they stand as they progress. This was a central theme of discussion the other day in my local monthly Arizona ISPI chapter meeting. One of the other attendees explained how his Performance Improvement group at work is looking at ways to build in positive feedback and rewards into their incremental interventions. While this isn't always possible, using the tactic where it is possible means you can square the feedback aspect of the PI model and give employees what they need to know about their performance, which is essential in situations where they are being developed for the future.

I'll close by saying that the three main points Kyle makes in his article do bring with them some amount of cultural shift, assuming the culture isn't already amenable to all three from the start. Cultural shifts can be quite difficult to achieve, but they are not impossible, and especially in today's global marketplace, adaptability of culture may be one of the most important underlying factors to the success of any leadership development program.

Reducing Duplication...

I read about this in T+D's news. The four life aspects - body, mind, home, and community - that are the focus of DailyFeats' model immediately reminded me of Stewart Friedman's Total Leadership, which I read last year. Both use a four part model that helps individuals quantify what they are doing in each part of their life. Friedman's model, however, is more complete, I think. Friedman focuses on an individual's four life "circles" - Self, Family, Profession, and Community. Friedman then provides tools to help one address each of these areas equally, in an effort to develop one's self as a leader.

Comparing the two is a bit problematic, as DailyFeats' video explanation shows their model as a bit more rudimentary a total concept than Friedman's. It does use a good system of encouragement by integrating a point system. Nevertheless, the parallels are there. I think Friedman's model is more complete, and I would recommend you to pick that up, but the DailyFeats model has the power of social media behind it. I see an opportunity to combine the two successfully.

The Economy of Performance: The Tenor of Trust in Tense Times

Spherion has just published the results of a study by Monster.com on how the wavering economy has affected the relationships between managers and their staff in the workplace. The results are not good. Surprising numbers of workers are finding their relationships with their managers deteriorating, and many responding that they could do a better job managing than their current boss. One particularly important issue is professional development, which many workers say is either not encouraged, followed up on, or supported by leadership. What's worse, many cite instances of a manager taking credit for their development, amongst other things.

As the economy continues to struggle for footing, it appears many factors of performance in the workplace are also under serious strain.

Shifting Organizational Paradigms

A story in Automotive News this week details GM's plans to revitalize Cadillac's sales numbers by improving the experience for buyers. As the article discusses, the sales of GM's Cadillac division have been lagging for many years behind the once peerless pace they had in the late 1990s. GM is employing the help of hotel chain Ritz-Carlton's trainers to help the shield-and-crescent dealerships change their image and their customer service, and in turn boost Cadillac above competitors such as Lexus and BMW. I think that GM, even being in its lean status compared with those profitable years of the recent past, is making a good move here even if it's expensive in the short run (which it almost assuredly is), particularly as a means to differentiate the Cadillac ownership experience. Employing the aid of some of the world's top experts in customer service is practically a no-brainer here.

But what I like most about the article is the detail provided with respect to the performance rigors in place at Ritz-Carlton. The company has solid expectations of performance in place for hotel employees, they understand the meaning of customer service and a poor experience on the part of customers, and they have done the good work of determining the costs involved by not addressing service issues. As a result Ritz-Carlton knows just what it loses per day, and they can understand what this means across the wider organization. Ritz-Carlton's system sounds like a great design, and is real performance improvement at work.

As an outsider to the process, I am intrigued to see what the outcomes are from this for the Cadillac brand and for GM. This is leadership recognizing it has a problem, and making the necessary adjustments to address it.

Management and the Potential for Performance Improvement

TDblog had a posting last week citing figures from a survey conducted by Right Management about the frequency of career discussions between employees and their managers. More than a third – thirty-seven percent - of the 683 respondents reported that they never hold such discussions with their manager. Thirty percent reported doing so once a year, and around twenty-eight percent reported having career discussions two or more times annually. The numbers appear to indicate some pretty stark realities. The article however seems to indicate that only one question was asked: “How often do you engage in career discussions with your manager?” I see a potential problem here, in that the survey is remarkably short. How is the term “career discussion” defined in this survey? It appears fairly self-explanatory, butI would appreciate more detail and clarity.

Taking the results as given, it appears that several companies could be missing out on some significant performance improvement opportunities, especially if almost two thirds of them never talk to their people. A promising number however is the twenty-eight percent that have at least two discussions per year with managers. Granted this is barely more than a quarter of the companies polled according to the results given. However, pulling from a relatively small group of people this seems promising. What we don’t know is the potential size variance in the polled companies. Secondly, at what level within each company were the respondents?

The general takeaway of this story is the importance of feedback. This is Gilbert BEM Cell 1-level stuff. Thirty-seven percent of respondents is (apparently) receiving no feedback at all about their career. This contributes to wider systemic issues in a company, as employees just keep humming along doing what they’re doing and not sharing or building networks and skill sets internally to increase performance. I will have to seek more research on this question to determine the accuracy of these numbers, but in this tense economic climate, it’s as important as ever for management to keep close ties with employees and to develop resources internally, and in many cases externally with former employees.