Fitting your people for the future: We have devised a very special formula to help you develop your people (including your managers and directors) to match your corporate plans.

We start by working with you to define the future needs of your organisation, and we translate these into future competencies - covering such areas as strategic awreness as well as traditional management and communications skills.

Then we devise activities that will show up a manager's proficiency in each area, and enable performance gaps to be identified so that a tailored development centre can be designed and run and participants can take ownership of their own development.

Our secret is to win the trust and confidence of all participants in a Development Centre Workshop. This delivers two powerful results:

Everyone attending feels in control, and open to learning and assesment from themselves and from others

Participants create their own development plans and are therefore committed to making them happen, and making the most of the opportunity.

The outcome is a highly motivated group, clearly focused on acquiring the skills necessary to meet the future needs of the organisation.

To find out just how this works in very different types of organisations, you may like to read the case studies on the NHS and AIT (an ECRM company).

Introduction: Whether your organisation is as large as the not-for-profit NHS or as fast growing as the new-on-the-block AIT, you will inevitably be asking yourself, 'how do we ensure that our managers and directors can manage the future?' More than merely upgrading present skills, this type of 'managing the performance gap' is the issue for Managing Directors and HR specialists alike. Lesley Gosling looks back on the process undertaken for helping both types of organisations plan for the future.

Imagine that you have a group of senior or middle managers, technically capable, but with many and various gaps in their management performance. That they need development is clear - but precisely what?

The managers themselves have very different views of their own development needs and, as is often the case, those with the greatest need are the ones who don't think they need anything at all! These are the ones who attend courses because they have been 'sent', and approach the experience accordingly.

You may imagine also that although the organisation recognises that this group needs something, nobody is clear what that is - they just want them to be 'good managers'.

You could, at this point, create a management training programme, covering all the usual things, and send all your middle managers on it. Many organisations do that, with mixed benefits accruing from the mixed levels of skills and attitudes that the managers take with them into the training room.

Or you might decide to take a more measured view of the situation by using an assessment centre approach. However, the very name assessment centre has all sorts of negative connotations, and some of you may be thinking, 'That would never work in our organisation!' But with a new approach to assessment, which completely involves the participants, some remarkable results can be achieved.
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Methodology: Here is the methodology:

First you define the core competencies of the current role, then look at how these will need to change to meet the future needs of the organisation over a two to five year timeframe.

Having defined these future competencies, you devise tasks and activities which will show up a manager's proficiency in each area, thus enabling you, and the managers themselves, to identify the performance gaps, and the future development needs.

Now your managers can draw up their own development plan, which will be specifically designed to meet the future needs of the organisation and each individual, with their commitment to those needs. Now managers won't be 'sent' on courses - they will have participated in drawing up their own development plan.

The theory sounds wonderful, you may be thinking, but does it work? Let's look at two real case studies - NHS Finance and AIT.

In October 1999 the NHS Executive, as part of their Medium Term Development Programme, commissioned an assessment of the development needs of 96 'second in line' NHS finance staff, when it was recognised that development at this level was not happening consistently across the regions. For many reasons, there was a desire to make things happen fast!

Q Learning took an innovative approach to the assessment programme, with some very special features.

• The definition of future core competencies for this group was developed with a team of key senior managers, on which the entire programme was then based.
• The creation of enjoyable but revealing tasks and exercises, to identify each competency level
• The design of self-assessment forms, so that everyone could participate in their own assessment. In particular the opportunity to see themselves on video - which was wiped clean at the end of each session.
• The inclusion of peer assessment (and the exclusion of assessment from superiors) as being a valid, accepted, but less threatening method of arriving at measurable conclusions
• The inclusion of core elements of learning input, to give development value to the participants, so that they had a taste of things to come, felt that the development process had begun and the sessions were not just one long test.
• A completely open approach to the entire process, so that everyone could see all the materials in advance - exercises, assessment forms, etc., and know that there would be no tricks or surprises.

So what happened?: The programme started with an introductory day in January 2000, when all the participants learned all about the programme - why it was happening, what it was designed to achieve and what was in it.

Then followed the three-day residential development workshops for groups of 10. It was decided not to use the name assessment centre, as it had more threatening connotations. Over the three days all the competencies were assessed using different tasks and exercises - at least two tasks for each competency.

The competencies were not just the traditional management skills. They covered all aspects of the manager's role, some of which are rarely overtly addressed, such as living corporate values and strategic awareness. Not only are they rarely addressed, they are rarely assessed, and devising their objective measurement was another unique feature of the programme.

Here is the complete list of competencies:

• Corporate values
• Strategic awareness
• Creating and managing change
• Achieving results
• Analysis and judgement
• Planning
• Communication
• Influencing
• Leadership
• Working in teams
• Developing people

Examples of the types of exercises undertaken were:

• Team problem solving
• Group discussions
• Individual and group presentations
• Role-play exercises
• Case studies

Many self assessment tools were used, such as:

• Personal conflict management style
• Leadership Assessment
• Teamworking preferences
• Learning styles
• Spiral dynamics of organisational change

Participants were trained to make peer assessments, and their scores, together with those of the Q.Learning facilitators, were all collated together, so that at the end of the three days, each participant had a clear picture of any personal gaps in the eleven core competencies, and could therefore create their own development programme from that chart.

So we now have 96 Deputy Directors of Finance, all with a personally designed development plan. These plans have been summarised and presented to the NHS Executive, for them to decide on an implementation programme.

A follow-up day scheduled for September, enabled progress on the plans to be reviewed, and plans modified and updated. The workshop participants are encouraged to keep a development diary, so that they can monitor and review their progress.

Reactions: Here are some reactions to the three-day workshops:

Sue Scott from North Durham Health Care NHS Trust said ' Our Development Centre was great fun but hard work, with lots of networking opportunities until the early hours! I'm really impressed that everyone now has a completed Personal Development Plan and the Follow Up session in September provided just the right amount of pressure on us all to make real progress with our development by then.'

Mike Harris, Assistant Director of Finance at Kidderminster Health Care NHS Trust, said 'Each of us had to give a presentation on a current issue or project that we needed to tackle. I was surprised at how similar some of the issues were. A lot of focus was on Trust mergers and efficiency savings. It will be useful to continue to work on the problems together and share ideas and experiences.'

From these quotes you can see that the whole process was viewed positively by the participants, who felt a part of it, rather than 'having it done to them'

The development programme that flows from this process will do just that - it will flow naturally - the needs are clear, and the commitment of all concerned has been won and secured by this special approach to assessment. The managers are ready and waiting, if not impatient, for the development process to begin in earnest, and indeed are being encouraged to take ownership of it themselves, without waiting for the NHS to spoon feed them! They also know that this plan will equip them for the future, not just the here and now, which is both motivating and confidence building, these being core attributes of the entire process. Groups have met informally to continue supporting each other, to share ideas and to learn new skills.

Mike Warner, Finance Staff Development & Audit Manager, Eastern Regional Office, who headed up the group which commissioned Q Learning said 'I have been impressed by the commitment of all those involved in the Development Centres, both presenters and delegates. This is an exciting opportunity for senior finance staff across the country to consider how their role will develop in the future. I will be watching with interest to see how delegates move on to more senior posts.' Not surprisingly, Q.Learning has been delighted to hear already of several promotions and opportunities grabbed by participants who have taken their learning in earnest.

Meanwhile at AIT, there were some similarities and differences. AIT had identified the need for just this process and had carefully planned to tackle the issue of developing their staff. Having already explored key competencies to take them into the future, the development centres were to come next, then the training courses.

Carolyn Ross, Head of Training and Development, said, 'We have always been clear that, for us at AIT, development centres must be for everyone in the company: a cradle to grave approach. We want people to have the development opportunities for future roles so that by the time they get into those roles, they are ready for them.' For AIT to continue to grow, it was seen as vital that they had strong leadership and management skills throughout the whole of the Company. AIT believed this so strongly that they were working to make leadership development an integral part of their recruitment, selection, development, appraisal and reward systems. It was to be integrated and rooted in their values.

For AIT, leadership begins with self-belief and understanding the concept of self-leadership. The key was for each individual, as they travelled through his or her development , to recognise whether they were acting as a self, team or strategic leader in any situation and to be equipped with the skills to act appropriately.

AIT had a very specific requirement for how the development centres would be run: they certainly required cool and logical thinking to ensure that everyone had quality feedback on each competency - but before that, the facilitators needed to fully understand the unique aspects of the culture of a company such as the fast-growing, do-it-fast and get-it-right (with charm) AIT. Q.Learning accepted the challenge to come up with a flexible, fun design that wouldn't weight participants down in bureaucracy! With only three weeks to go to the start of the desired delivery in June 2000, the pressure was on!

The Q. Learning team and the AIT Development team of Carolyn Ross and Ian Elborn (Learning and Development Manager), got their heads together to design an overall framework for the different levels in the company, specific behaviours linked to competencies and a two-day workshop that would excite and inspire. Creative, rather than off-the-wall, was the result. The first workshop had 4 people signed up a week before but 12 turned up on the day. After the first day, word was out - the others all filled up and waiting lists were started! Inspite of the lack of bureaucracy in AIT, participants did manage a page of a personal development plan and Ian Elborn has been able to build on these to develop meaningful training courses.

Most of all, it was an opportunity for individuals to stretch up to future desired behaviours and to receive precise and nurturing feedback. Carl Robinson, Team Leader, said, 'It was a great course - everyone I have spoken to has been hugely positive about it. Personally, it has opened my eyes and will make me focus on the future.'

And the development centres quickly gained the appreciation of senior managers such as Madeleine Tate, Vocational Head of Business Analysts: 'All the participants in my group were most enthusiastic about the quality and nature of the event, and felt that they had learned a great deal about themselves. This has enabled me to take their personal training needs forward in a very practical sense, using the matrix of courses on the Web, to fit their specific needs. It means that the career aspiration part of the assessment review has real support beneath it - I look forward to hearing the results of the higher level ones as they are run.'

Carolyn Ross feels that another strategic step has been taken towards growing the Company. 'We wanted to integrate leadership fully within our culture and values and Q.Learning has been quick to understand and deliver to that goal. We are delighted at the very positive and committed response from those who have worked so hard to make sure we got it right.'

If you have ownership of 'managing your organisation's performance gap', you may well want to follow the Q.Learning process:

• Talk to representatives of the target group to identify future competencies required by the business in a two to five year timeframe.
• Clarify observable behaviours for these future competencies.
• Explore and be certain of the culture of the organisation within which these competencies will operate and tailor your thinking accordingly (detailed paperwork for Deputy Finance Directors is fine but not for creative project managers).
• Design a development centre with a range of different and fun learning activities and exercises that measure every competency at least twice.
• Ensure that participants understand the process and that there are no secrets.
• Have a ratio of no greater than 1-4 facilitators to participants so that participants have precise and quality feedback as well as learning how to monitor themselves. Use video in selected exercises and ensure that these tapes are wiped clean.
• Make sure that each participant develops a meaningful development plan both to prompt themself and to help you target development needs.
• Keep records of how individuals do develop and create an audit trail - possibly over years - to be able to evaluate the success of the development centre approach and to link with other initiatives such as investors in people.

When you know what you want, then the development centre approach may well help your organisation to be ready for its future. As the Managing Director of Orange PLC, Hans Snook, says, 'The future is determined by new understanding gained today.
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