Do you have a strategy for developing the leaders at your company? Is there a plan for your personal leadership development? You might have a strategy for the business, but this is not the same thing.
The current estimate is that 36% of businesses do NOT have a strategy for developing their leadership talent.
Forbes Magazine identifies what makes a successful leadership development strategy. Notice that they say having "sporadic or inconsistent development opportunities" is a mistake.
Fortunately, this mistake is easy to fix.
Start with understanding what your business driver is. Are you working to increase market share? Improve processes through innovation? Shift competitive position? When you know where you want your business (or business unit, department or team) to go, now you can figure out if you have the talent to take you there.
This is not the point in the story where we say that if you don't currently have the talent that you should get rid of your people and hire superstars. In fact, you likely have many diamonds in the rough that are just waiting to be cultivated into top performers. Just as it's more costly to find a new customer than it is to leverage the ones you have, it is more costly to start from scratch with a new employee than it is to develop your current team.
The caveat to this last statement, is of course, that if you have what I'll call deadwood or bottom-feeders, it is less costly to help them find employment opportunities elsewhere. The damage these people can do to your organization, your team and to you, can be significant, so trim them and it will be a win-win for everyone involved.
The key is to identify a plan for developing the talent you have. Prepare them to be more successful today, and set them up for future success.
Next, look at the learning and development opportunities currently available to your leaders. Companies run into trouble when they have a training plan full of one-hour seminars or short-spurt workshops that don't tie to business objectives. Stand-alone learning typically doesn't sustain the behaviours you want it to, and there's a much more effective way to develop your leaders where you have less value-leakage from the training itself. This can also happen when you have a variety of vendors or preferred suppliers who are unable to link their content to the concepts and content of other programs. If your training programs don't lead to a unified end, it will be much harder to gain maximum value from them.
Leadership is a team sport, and often we will send the leader to a training class, or have them participate in a webinar, or take an e-Learning class, and then expect them to apply what they have learned. In the words of the great John Wooden,
"You haven't taught until they have learned."
How do you make sure your leaders actually learn? By creating a leadership development strategy that maximizes the likelihood that they will be able to USE what they've learned, immediately. That means, as I'm sure you already know, that the program content and format must be relevant to the times, and to the business need. It also needs to be conducted in a way that doesn't waste time or money.
Many companies are subscribing to the 70-20-10 philosophy of combining just-in-time learning to traditional learning, in the hopes of maximizing effectiveness. This model, and what some might call current thinking, is really the practical application of something I learned a long time ago: Learning doesn't take place in the classroom. This sentiment is as true today as it was when I first heard it years ago. The benefit of learning is not to increase knowing, but to increase doing.
If you're truly wanting to have your teams implement what they have learned, consider something like an "Actionable Conversations" strategy. This is where leaders have a guided conversation with their teams about a current real-time issue, but have the conversation through the lens of a concept from a popular business book.
For example, take the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen R. Covey. This book has influenced over 25 million people around the world and is the book that Time listed as one of "The 25 Most Influential Business Management Books."
If you, your team, or you company, has done any 7 Habits training, or if you have the book in your office or personal library, then you know the power inside its pages. But how successful have you been in implementing the principles into your daily business operations?
It's much easier to read the book than it is to apply its lessons. That's where Actionable Conversations comes in; you can help the leaders in your company (including yourself) truly bring the concepts to life. A one-hour conversation with the team around a current business issue, and how the ideas inside the 7 Habits book can help you move the team forward. Follow that up with micro-behaviour changes, and a 30-day measurable plan tracked through a powerful commitment engine that provides key insights. Now you have something that truly makes a difference.
So, convinced you need a strategy but not sure where to start? Check out our Strategic Leadership Program to see a fully integrated leadership development strategy. Or use our framework to create your own or check your current program for gaps. However you decide to move forward, don't wait another day. You'll be glad you acted now.
