Management Development or How to Make a Soufflé

The Four Pillars of Successful Management Development

Pillar 3: Structure

You are choosing a management development programme for yourself or others in your organisation. Of all the factors you take into consideration – the cost, the content, whether the course is residential or not, whether you’ll be able to swim and sauna before the gourmet evening meal at the venue –probably the last thing to cross your mind will be the structure of the programme.

Of course, you might discount a week-long programme on the basis that you can’t afford the time out of the office (or alternatively you might choose to shortlist it because you’ll do anything to get away for a few days). But beyond the length of the time commitment, what else is there to consider?

Management and leadership are activities which are done, not known. It is one thing to know the recipe for a soufflé, for example (any good cookbook or search engine can furnish you with the relevant knowledge), but it is something else to be able to walk into a kitchen and make a soufflé. Similarly, it is one thing to sit in a seminar room and receive input on how to lead and manage a team, and it is another to go back into the workplace and actually lead and manage your team.

You would not teach someone how to make a soufflé without asking them at some point to go and make a soufflé. There is little to be gained from management development programmes which do not demand that managers to go back into the workplace and apply what they have learned to create results. This is like training chefs but never asking them to cook, like coaching golfers but making sure they never go out on the golf course, like banning aspiring swimmers from getting wet.

The only structure which will produce a real return on investment in development is a structure in which delegates attend the first part of a programme, then go and apply what they have learned in the workplace to create results, then attend another section of the programme, then go and apply what they have learned in the workplace, and so on. This is the only way we learn how to do anything – from our own experience. If opportunities to accumulate experience – and a strong demand to create results – are not built into the structure of a management development programme, you can be certain that no real experience has been gained, and no results created.

After over 25 years in management development, Mitchell Phoenix’ Managing Director Kevin Yates is convinced that the only viable structure is a day a month. “A day a month is often as long as senior people can be away from the office,” he says, “and it keeps the focus firmly on the delegates and their responsibility to use the material to create results. The quality of the results which come back gets stronger and stronger as the programme goes on and participants gain in skill and experience, so that the results on day 6 are often much more sophisticated than those reported on day 2. The whole process is cumulative, and designed to spotlight the participants and how they are changing and adapting what they are doing in the workplace.

“On the other hand, programmes which are geared towards input for the delegates, rather than output from the delegates (ie results), are often more cost effective and conveniently accessed via a book.”

Few CEOs Cite Paint-Balling as their Chief Leadership Influence

The Four Pillars of Successful Management Development

Pillar 2: Robust Content

Few CEO’s Cite Paint-Balling as their Chief Leadership Influence

Rare quotations:

“I paint-balled my way to the top”
“karaoke made a leader of me”
“I now run all meetings on an assault course”
“all new employees have to fall backwards off a desk”
“the Captain and flight crew improved safety 14.6% by singing light opera”

One morning, walking back to your cubicle from the kitchen, you detect a subtle change in the atmosphere of the office. You look around and realise none of your colleagues are at their desks. A fan buzzes. On a notice board, sales targets flutter in the breeze. The first pellet catches you on the leg. The second and third thud into your chest, splattering blue and yellow dye. A fourth pellet smacks into the mug you are holding, and you feel a scalding sensation as you throw coffee all over your shirt and tie. “That leadership through paint-balling course,” you think to yourself, “has caused more trouble than it was worth.”

For comedians training is one of the most fertile areas of business life. The tenuous links made between a host of activities – from actors’ trust games to orienteering – and our working practices are hilarious because we can all recognise the scenario. Whether it is making the accounts team go through an army assault course or asking the production division to do a karaoke for leadership programme, everyone knows someone who has done something ridiculous in the name of development, or – worse still – has had to take part in something ridiculous themselves.

And, if you have spent your development budget on paint-balling, cooking and actors’ games, you should have gone to the pub instead.

If you want a development activity which is useful, rather than simply entertaining, what should you look for? After more than 25 years in development, Mitchell Phoenix’ Kevin Yates concludes that there are four pillars of successful development programmes. “Look for expert facilitation, an unwavering focus on the creation of results, a structure which will allow the creation of results, and tried and proven content,” he says.

What should this content consist of? First of all it should be usable in the workplace. Under pressure in a real life work situation, anything overly complicated, such as a theoretical ‘model’, will not come to mind or be used. Second, content should be useful, so that when it is applied it will solve a problem and/or generate concrete results. This means the content should focus on how to conduct the key activities managers and leaders undertake. Whether the focus is delegation, persuasion, motivation or anything else, concrete detail on how to do each of these things is vital. It is not enough to define the problem, the content must take us towards the solution and then prompt us to take action back in the workplace.

“Perhaps most important,” says Yates, “is that the content is based on strong, ethical business principles which senior managers can relate to, and on which they can build. They must see clearly how what is being suggested to them fits with the business principles they already hold, or with principles they aspire to and are likely to adopt.”

Management Development and the Middle Ages

The Four Pillars of Successful Management Development

Pillar 1: Focus on Results

Businesspeople are good at measuring a return. Stereotyped from at least the Middle Ages as bean-counters with abacuses, the Blackberry-wielding modern version of the medieval merchant knows how much things cost and how many of them s/he is selling. You measure the impact of lean manufacturing techniques on the bottom line. You measure the ROI of developing and marketing a new product. You can even measure how much each individual salesperson pulls in for the business.

But modern businesspeople are useless at measuring the return on investment in management development. Research conducted by DDI found that only around 25% of organisations formally measure the results of leadership development programmes. A recent IRS survey polled 74 organisations which ran management development programmes, out of which 13 said they were a failure, 22 said they hadn’t achieved a return on investment, and only six believed their programmes had been a great success. Both sets of findings suggest that today’s management development is a long way from the shrewd calculations of yesterday’s merchants.

What can the past teach us? In the times when Powerpoint, flip-charts and break-out groups didn’t exist, the closest businesspeople got to management development was the apprentice system. Of course, no-one would advocate asking managers to live in poverty for seven years, sleeping on their boss’s floor and only having Sundays off if they are lucky (if you recognise any of that, it’s time for a move - depressed job market or not). What is instructive about the apprentice system is that it asked apprentices to produce something to prove they had learned the skills of their trade. This “masterpiece” was visible proof of whether the apprentice had become a master or not.

Management development programmes which do not create measurable results are like apprenticeships where no masterpiece is required. In fact, they are like apprenticeships where no work is required at all. What guildsman would accept an apprentice into the stonemasons’ guild without visible evidence that he could carve stone to an acceptable standard? As turnaround specialist Ross Stuart observes, “if you can’t see any results, you have to question whether there are any.”

Management as we know it did not exist seven hundred years ago, but Mitchell Phoenix’ Kevin Yates is convinced that we should judge the development of our managers by the same yardstick that guildsmen used: the evidence of our eyes. “Only by creating results in response to the challenges of the workplace can managers truly measure their development,” he says, “and that’s the only way you will be able to accurately judge ROI.” Because of this, Mitchell Phoenix programmes are designed to create results from the first day. “Focus on results is one of the four pillars of successful management development programmes,” says Yates, “and in conjunction with a unique structure, robust content and expert facilitation, they will repay your investment many times over.”

Leadership Example - Berlusconi

More allegations about Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s Premier, have emerged in recent days. This time he is alleged to have exchanged business favors for sex from an escort. Call it sloppy management, a devil-may-care attitude or just bad luck, the whole episode reflects back on the vessel under his leadership.

What business is it of ours how leaders behave on their own time? Surely they are entitled to a private life? Of course they are, as long as it remains private.

Berlusconi has proved over many years that he is a flawed leader. He seeks the limelight and has frequently been accused of insensitivity, abusing his position and shady dealing. What, therefore, is his duty to those he leads?

The first principle of leadership is to demand the utmost of oneself. At one level it encapsulates the idea of setting an example. It is a very simple idea that provides a daily personal challenge. A leader’s example can inspire or dispirit in the same measure. Setting an example requires consciousness and an acceptance of responsibility.

As children you may have played a game called ‘Follow the Leader’. Luckily we get to decide if we want to or not in adulthood. Is Berlusconi a rascal or a rogue? Would you follow him?

The 'will' to lead

I was recently asked what I considered to be the most important attribute of a leader. It's a challenging question since we all seem to have our own idea about this and quite a few of these ideas are not shared. Perhaps it is not possible for all the people to share the same description all of the time. But if we take a step back and ask what could a leader become proficient at, given the will to do so? The answer is surprising; most leaders could learn almost all the skills of leadership you care to come up with. Charisma may escape this concept, but it would not have been on my list in the first place as it is a product of application. Other qualities deliver charisma (or not) through their use.

So I believe now, and have done so for some time, that the most important characteristic of leadership is the 'will' to do so, all the important other skills can be learned. While all else can be learned, not all is learned and I believe this dichotomy has a bearing on the quality of leadership and is a complex mix of the the same will to learn and the sense to guess that there is more to learn. This sounds a little absolute but I am interested to open up this area, our modern society needs new type of leadership as followers are much better informed and become sceptical of those they perceive as charlatans.
The will to lead is the most important attribute of a leader, the will to learn follows quickly.
Kevin Yates
Mitchell Phoenix London

Mitchell Phoenix and the Kirkpatrick model of training evaluation

Donald Kirkpatrick developed a very popular evaluation model that has been used since the late 1950s by the training community. The focus is on four kinds of outcomes that result from training programs and identifies four levels of evaluation:

Level 1 Evaluation - 1st Reaction
Level 2 Evaluation - Learning transfer
Level 3 Evaluation – Behavioral change
Level 4 Evaluation – Positive, attributable results


Level 1— 1st Reaction

Here the goal is to measure participants’ reactions to the training program. You should measure their reactions immediately after the program. Level one evaluation should not just include reactions toward the overall program “Did you enjoy the program?” it can, and should, include measurement of participants’ reactions or attitudes toward specific components of the program, such as the relevance of topics, the style and structure, the schedule and participation.

Level one evaluation is the measurement of initial delegate satisfaction with the training experience.

Learning (Level two outcomes) and transfer of learning (Level three outcomes) are unlikely to occur unless participants have positive attitudes toward the training program. The measurement of specific aspects of the training program can provide important information about what aspects of the training program can be improved in the future.

The following point applies to all four levels of Kirkpatrick’s outcome evaluation. Evaluators should establish performance standards on outcomes, so that common evaluative judgments can be made on all four steps.

Finally level one evaluation is useful for immediate reaction to the events but does not signal improvement.


Level 2—Learning transfer

Level two evaluation is done soon after the training event to determine if participants gained the knowledge, skills, or attitudes. A couple of issues present themselves in leadership development:

1. How does a business measure knowledge, skills, and attitudes?

2. What instrument(s) can be used to determine improvement in level two outcomes?

It is here in the area of Leadership development that the Kirkpatrick model has less currency. Firstly: Should we try to measure things that are almost entirely subjective – improvement in attitude from one week to the next? Or secondly: Create such tenuous measurements and connections that the process takes more energy than making the improvements.

Ready & Conger (London Business School) in their review of training in the workplace, call these “make-believe metrics’ and suggest that trying to measure here is less cost effective that in later stages.

Level 3—Behavioral changes

Here your goal is to find out if training program participants change their on-the-job-behavior as a result of their having attended and participated in the training program. The level three question is,

“To what extent has the training had a positive effect on job performance?”

Level three evaluation specifically involves measuring the transfer of knowledge, skills, and attitudes from the training context to the workplace.

Learning is likely to transfer more effectively if the conditions in the work setting are favorable for transfer.

Here Ready & Conger identified 3 Key Success Factors

1. Managers at all levels accept joint responsibility for leadership and management development - Ownership is distributed, demand for change is established as a cultural requirement. The organizational culture and climate must change in order to support individual change.

2. Leadership Development should be based on the company’s own strategic drivers and requirements. These must be understood at the levels involved and communicated at the start of training.


3. Make believe Metrics – Already mentioned. Don’t spend resource measuring what continues to elude measurement. Attend to business outcomes and the development of common culture and practice. The training or learning is directly linked to workplace activity and outcomes; Project themes set and live business issues addressed using learning from the training. Provide real world examples and focus on actual experience performing and practicing the behaviors.

Level 4 – Positive and attributable results

Here your goal is to find out if the training program led to final business results that contribute to the “bottom line” (i.e., business profits). Level four outcomes are not limited to return on training investment, they can include other major results that contribute to the effective functioning of an organization. These include outcomes that most people would agree is “good for the business.” and can be changes in financial outcomes (such as positive ROI or increased profits) or changes in variables that should have a relatively direct effect on financial outcomes at some point in the future, for example:

• Improved quality of work. Higher productivity.
• Reduction in staff turnover, Improved quality of work life
• Improving human relationships
• Improved vertical and horizontal communication
• Fewer grievances. Lower absenteeism. Higher worker morale
• Fewer accidents. Greater job satisfaction
• Increased sales

And, as a result, increased profits.



Mitchell Phoenix Limited was established as providers of Leadership and Management development in 1988. Since then, more than 4000 managers worldwide have benefited from the unique blend of training, coaching and consultancy.

www.mitchellphoenix.com

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