The training profession can’t hide from its duty as organizational effectiveness consultants
The traditional training department is changing. As organizations look to improve productivity there has been a realization that training and development are only part of an equation that includes everything from interpersonal conflicts to the systems and processes that get work done. With this realization comes the need, and opportunity, for training experts to become organizational effectiveness gurus.
One of the big challenges within the training and development field is that there are two complementary but different skill sets involved when it comes to organizational development or improving organizational performance, says British Columbia-based labour-management relations and human resources consultant Mark Alexander.
“Some practitioners are excellent educators or trainers, others are better at thinking strategically and developing an intervention. Not many practitioners can do both.”
“There are lots of snake-oil salesmen,” who can be characterized as “one-trick ponies,” Alexander says. There are a lot of people who are good trainers who fell into organizational development by default because the skill sets are often lumped together. “I don’t think there are that many really good organizational development practitioners in Canada.”
Organizational development: Just a passing fancy?
That puts the field of training and development practitioners at risk of being discredited by the general management community, “because what will happen is the old flavour-of-the-month thing,” and organizational development will be considered just another passing management fad, says Alexander. Many of these fads had elements that were of real value, “but were being sold by people who didn’t look beyond the training aspect and see that there had to be some development of the organization before they would show their real value and become useful concepts that were implemented.”
Traditional training and development has focused on providing skills. But increasingly, senior managers see the connection between individual and organizational performance, and they want training and development to reflect that.
What most line managers want, however, is “compliant individual employees,” who can be trained to perform certain tasks or improve their performance in those tasks, says Alexander.
What front-line workers often tell the training and development professional who is looking at organizational performance is that they already know how to do the job, but there’s a problem with the organization, the systems and processes or the manager, says Alexander.
In the workplace, “you can do some work on changing the person through training, but unless you do some something about changing the environment, then whatever training you do isn’t likely to have a huge impact,” says Alexander.
A professional with a strong organizational development background will get to know the organization before designing the intervention, trying to understand what the needs are and what the receptivity to the training will be once it has taken place. If that happens, there’s a greater likelihood that the training will be implemented. For organizational development to effectively improve performance, the training and development practitioner should spend time working with the line manager, identifying the needs and desired outcome.
“In most cases, his or her concern is with performance. It could be any aspect of performance,” including quality, meeting service standards or production targets, but it is vital to clarify the situation, says Alexander. It’s important to say to the line manager that “you’re not achieving the expectations or outcomes that you want, so let’s look at what they are.” There may be knowledge gaps related to people or technical skills, which can be influenced by training or the problem could be something technical, from equipment to processes.
“In many cases, training is only a part — and in many cases, not even a major part — of the intervention. So if they’re looking for improved productivity, then you have to break that down. What do you really mean by improved productivity? And then you break that down,” to identify the knowledge gaps and the best way to close them. “It may not be training. It may be some kind of self-instruction aspect, or it may be some PC-based program or it may be some kind of coaching or shadowing program. So the organizational development practitioner has a much wider range of tools at her disposal than the “traditional” trainer does, in some cases.
Key question: Has my boss taken this training?
If the intervention involves training, the important thing is that the “responsible manager, the one who is going to have to work with and lead these people when they come out of training,” must buy into the process at the outset. The most common question Alexander gets when he runs a training session is, “Has my boss taken this training?”
That’s because front-line workers know that if their supervisor hasn’t taken the training, “the likelihood of being able to apply what they have learned may be severely limited. Whereas if the boss has taken the training, or better yet, is taking the training with them, then they can jointly structure how they’re going to implement what they’re learning.”
The mission statement and any statements of vision, values or principles should be the foundation for employee training and development, says Gerry Henderson, director of knowledge for the Canadian Management Centre, a Toronto-based management training firm.
“Everyone in the organization has the ability to impact the organization financially and to help meet its goals.” Educating mid- to senior managers about the importance of the mission and vision without similar training for front-line staff creates an “upstairs-downstairs” relationship, Henderson says.
Thus training and development and organizational effectiveness must be positioned within the greater business context, and that context must be communicated from top to bottom.
Telus revamps T&D
The training and development program of B.C.-based communications giant Telus was recently recognized by the American Society for Training and Development for the second year in a row, ranking sixth in an international competition.
“I think the number one thing is to have a common understanding of what goal you’re trying to achieve,” says Josh Blair, vice-president of learning and development at Telus.
“A few years ago our corporate learning function was set up as a corporate university,” with a catalogue of courses available to all employees. “We saw significant tension there, because there wasn’t significant discussion between the corporate learning group and the line groups, be that middle managers or front-line managers, in terms of what the ultimate goal was and what we were trying to achieve in each case,” says Blair.
Telus restructured the corporate learning function, “so that it is more of a performance consulting organization. That basically means working together with the line groups to identify what are their performance gaps and then identify training or learning solutions to directly work toward closing those performance gaps,” or taking acceptable performance and moving it to a new level.
Needs identification is done by in-house staff, but “in terms of fulfillment of the solution, sometimes we do that internally and sometimes we do that through our strategic learning partners externally.”
Every Telus employee has an individual career development plan designed to improve performance, and the performance appraisal and learning systems are integrated. The combined program is called “growing for high performance,” says Blair. It involves:
•understanding expectations;
•performance assessment against those expectations;
•planning professional development; and
•going through the development.
That cycle continues over and over again, but the same process can also be applied to an organizational unit.
“We can go in and assess what the expectations of an organizational unit are, do an assessment of how the organization is doing in terms of being able to meet those expectations, and then also plan a larger development intervention for the organization as a whole, run it, and then go through the same cycle once again to test how that development worked and what are their outcomes and what next steps are required.”
Telus has five strategic thrusts in human resources, “and one of them is to optimize the learning environment in the company. And it seems to be working well.” Part of the process is training and development for HR staff. “We’re trying to look at the future and what’s needed for the future, so not only do we offer core HR training, we’re training our folks to give them better consulting skills, moving from the university mode to the performance consulting model.”
Mike Moralis is a freelance writer.
One of the big challenges within the training and development field is that there are two complementary but different skill sets involved when it comes to organizational development or improving organizational performance, says British Columbia-based labour-management relations and human resources consultant Mark Alexander.
“Some practitioners are excellent educators or trainers, others are better at thinking strategically and developing an intervention. Not many practitioners can do both.”
“There are lots of snake-oil salesmen,” who can be characterized as “one-trick ponies,” Alexander says. There are a lot of people who are good trainers who fell into organizational development by default because the skill sets are often lumped together. “I don’t think there are that many really good organizational development practitioners in Canada.”
Organizational development: Just a passing fancy?
That puts the field of training and development practitioners at risk of being discredited by the general management community, “because what will happen is the old flavour-of-the-month thing,” and organizational development will be considered just another passing management fad, says Alexander. Many of these fads had elements that were of real value, “but were being sold by people who didn’t look beyond the training aspect and see that there had to be some development of the organization before they would show their real value and become useful concepts that were implemented.”
Traditional training and development has focused on providing skills. But increasingly, senior managers see the connection between individual and organizational performance, and they want training and development to reflect that.
What most line managers want, however, is “compliant individual employees,” who can be trained to perform certain tasks or improve their performance in those tasks, says Alexander.
What front-line workers often tell the training and development professional who is looking at organizational performance is that they already know how to do the job, but there’s a problem with the organization, the systems and processes or the manager, says Alexander.
In the workplace, “you can do some work on changing the person through training, but unless you do some something about changing the environment, then whatever training you do isn’t likely to have a huge impact,” says Alexander.
A professional with a strong organizational development background will get to know the organization before designing the intervention, trying to understand what the needs are and what the receptivity to the training will be once it has taken place. If that happens, there’s a greater likelihood that the training will be implemented. For organizational development to effectively improve performance, the training and development practitioner should spend time working with the line manager, identifying the needs and desired outcome.
“In most cases, his or her concern is with performance. It could be any aspect of performance,” including quality, meeting service standards or production targets, but it is vital to clarify the situation, says Alexander. It’s important to say to the line manager that “you’re not achieving the expectations or outcomes that you want, so let’s look at what they are.” There may be knowledge gaps related to people or technical skills, which can be influenced by training or the problem could be something technical, from equipment to processes.
“In many cases, training is only a part — and in many cases, not even a major part — of the intervention. So if they’re looking for improved productivity, then you have to break that down. What do you really mean by improved productivity? And then you break that down,” to identify the knowledge gaps and the best way to close them. “It may not be training. It may be some kind of self-instruction aspect, or it may be some PC-based program or it may be some kind of coaching or shadowing program. So the organizational development practitioner has a much wider range of tools at her disposal than the “traditional” trainer does, in some cases.
Key question: Has my boss taken this training?
If the intervention involves training, the important thing is that the “responsible manager, the one who is going to have to work with and lead these people when they come out of training,” must buy into the process at the outset. The most common question Alexander gets when he runs a training session is, “Has my boss taken this training?”
That’s because front-line workers know that if their supervisor hasn’t taken the training, “the likelihood of being able to apply what they have learned may be severely limited. Whereas if the boss has taken the training, or better yet, is taking the training with them, then they can jointly structure how they’re going to implement what they’re learning.”
The mission statement and any statements of vision, values or principles should be the foundation for employee training and development, says Gerry Henderson, director of knowledge for the Canadian Management Centre, a Toronto-based management training firm.
“Everyone in the organization has the ability to impact the organization financially and to help meet its goals.” Educating mid- to senior managers about the importance of the mission and vision without similar training for front-line staff creates an “upstairs-downstairs” relationship, Henderson says.
Thus training and development and organizational effectiveness must be positioned within the greater business context, and that context must be communicated from top to bottom.
Telus revamps T&D
The training and development program of B.C.-based communications giant Telus was recently recognized by the American Society for Training and Development for the second year in a row, ranking sixth in an international competition.
“I think the number one thing is to have a common understanding of what goal you’re trying to achieve,” says Josh Blair, vice-president of learning and development at Telus.
“A few years ago our corporate learning function was set up as a corporate university,” with a catalogue of courses available to all employees. “We saw significant tension there, because there wasn’t significant discussion between the corporate learning group and the line groups, be that middle managers or front-line managers, in terms of what the ultimate goal was and what we were trying to achieve in each case,” says Blair.
Telus restructured the corporate learning function, “so that it is more of a performance consulting organization. That basically means working together with the line groups to identify what are their performance gaps and then identify training or learning solutions to directly work toward closing those performance gaps,” or taking acceptable performance and moving it to a new level.
Needs identification is done by in-house staff, but “in terms of fulfillment of the solution, sometimes we do that internally and sometimes we do that through our strategic learning partners externally.”
Every Telus employee has an individual career development plan designed to improve performance, and the performance appraisal and learning systems are integrated. The combined program is called “growing for high performance,” says Blair. It involves:
•understanding expectations;
•performance assessment against those expectations;
•planning professional development; and
•going through the development.
That cycle continues over and over again, but the same process can also be applied to an organizational unit.
“We can go in and assess what the expectations of an organizational unit are, do an assessment of how the organization is doing in terms of being able to meet those expectations, and then also plan a larger development intervention for the organization as a whole, run it, and then go through the same cycle once again to test how that development worked and what are their outcomes and what next steps are required.”
Telus has five strategic thrusts in human resources, “and one of them is to optimize the learning environment in the company. And it seems to be working well.” Part of the process is training and development for HR staff. “We’re trying to look at the future and what’s needed for the future, so not only do we offer core HR training, we’re training our folks to give them better consulting skills, moving from the university mode to the performance consulting model.”
Mike Moralis is a freelance writer.
