designing management training and development for competitive advantage: lessons from the best

7/30/2019 Designing management training and development for competitive advantage: lessons from the best

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Traditionally, individuals were trained around

current job-based deficiencies and skill needs.

However, a few exemplary organizations, view

a T&D as an continuous process and a primary

source of sustainable competitive advantage.

In these organizations, T&D becomes the

critical means for creating readiness and

flexibility for change across all organizational

levels.


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Readiness and flexibility are achieved largely through

supervisory, management, and executive training.

This study was designed to understand and describe how these

best-in-class organizations design and utilize supervisory and

management T&D to achieve and sustain competitive

advantage.


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Thus the goal of this paper is to collect benchmark

information and derive a model of how the best T&

D organizations structure, implement, and conduct

management-level T&D.

26 of the 62 organizations served as a benchmark.

These make forty two percent of the organization.


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Written information and interviews were taken from

the heads of the departments.

These were specialists, key consultants, executives

and managers.

A best-practices model was developed from the

commonalities of the information collected.


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TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

FRAMEWORK


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How do exemplary companies tie T&D to their strategic

business plans?

In these organizations, there is a structured linkage between

the organization's strategic mission and the goals of the T&D

program.

T&D goals and processes are reviewed and updated annually

according to the changing strategic needs of the business.


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At Apple's corporate T&D headquarters - Apple

University - regular forums with executives are

conducted to exchange information about the

strategic direction of the firm and its business

units.

In addition, professionals from Apple University

are permanently assigned to business units and

serve as a continuous information funnel between

these units and the university.


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Apple also uses its worldwide information network to collect

information about changing business requirements, and to

facilitate immediate responsiveness in T&D offerings.

In another corporation, Motorola, the CEO is one of four

"outside" members of the Advisory Board of Directors to

Motorola University . This creates a link between the CEO's

agenda and its implementation through T&D.


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At P &G, members of the executive committee

teach at P&G College whenever they are

physically nearby. For example, over the course

of 1992, the CEO had taught at P&G Collegenine times.

In Corning Glass Corporation, question "What

do we need to do with people to meet thedevelopment needs of the company?" has been

addressed by the Board of Directors annually

since 1979.


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Fifty-eight percent of the organizations interviewed, have

some form of explicit T&D policies.

Objectives are achieving consistent employee access to, and

participation in, T&D, budget allocation, required hours of

participation, or required T&D before or after promotions.

Other rules-oriented policies refer to the annual number of

hours each employee is obliged to spend in T&D.

Some companies, such as ARCO and 3M, specify a minimum

of 40 hours of training per year.


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AT&T Universal Card, requires 80 hours of annual training per

employee, and at Andersen Consulting, Zytec, and the Saturn

division of General Motors, the figure is 100 hours.

Many organizations like P&G establish T&D policies as part of

structured career paths, a prerequisite for consideration for

promotion, or a requirement once the promotion is obtained.


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Benchmark organizations also strive to mold theattitudes and behaviors of their supervisors and

managers through values-oriented T&D statements.

For instance, some of the organizations like Coca

Cola (according to its mission statement 2000),

assert that "every manager is held accountable for

the development of his/her employees.

Managers' own rewards and promotions are made

contingent upon their success as developers of talent.


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Needs are influenced by factors both internal and external to

the organization.

In these benchmark organizations, the establishment of T&D

needs is driven most often by the organization's mission and

strategy, with an average rating of 6.27. Individual

performance factors, environmental trends, and job-based

information appear to be less influential in establishing T&D

needs, at 5.31, 5.08, and 5.04 respectively.


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Several organizations, including 3M, Apple,

Corning, and Motorola, conduct annual conferences

with the organization's most senior executives to

elicit their views of the skills that will be needed to

achieve strategic short-term and long-term goals.

In these companies, however, environmental

demands drive adjustments to the business strategy,

with T&D changes implemented as a result of

decisions to modify the business strategy.


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For example, Xerox benchmarks other exemplary companies

and collects information from their partners and suppliers to

best understand the economic, cultural, and technological

trends affecting their business.

Similarly, Northern Telecom uses customer focus groups to

learn about product and service requirements to identify

employee development needs.


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Transfer refers to the degree of continuity between

learning in the T&D context, and behaviors and results

in the job environment.

The first critical requirement for transfer is an overlapbetween learning in training, and requirements on the

job. The overlap assures that the knowledge, abstract

concepts, attitudes, or behaviors acquired through T&D

match the strategic business needs.

The simplest way to maximize overlap between the job

and training environments is through on-the-job training.


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General Mills indicated that only about 10% of its training

occurs away from the job.

Texas Instruments, uses an HR system in which critical

competencies are derived from job analyses. These critical

competencies serve as the common underlying competency

framework for selection, promotion, and reward decisions,

and for establishing T&D requirements for a given job.

At Northern Telecom, continued promotion requires active

participation in training activities.


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Xerox implements T&D sequentially across the organization,

from the top down. With the exception of the chief executive

and the most junior person in the organization, everyone

receives the T&D twice, once as trainee and once as trainer to

his/her direct reports or peers. In Xerox, this is called "LUTI" -

Learn, Use, Train, and Inspect.


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How do exemplary organizations determine

the content of T&D?

Benchmark organizations derive the content of T&D from

their strategic objectives, culture and values, and their

present and predicted competency and skill needs.The most commonly addressed T&D area is leadership

training. An example is Coca-Cola's 10-week management

development program for persons in line to become general

managers. The program includes traditional leadership

training, as well as internally designed simulations that are"mirror images of business in Coca-Cola," and an action

learning program in which four member teams are given

cross-functional and cross-cultural project assignments and

sent to locations outside their native countries.


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GE also employs an action learning approach in its four-week

training program for mid- to senior-level executives. Teams of

executives are given actual business problems identified by thecompany's top officials, such as Chief Executive Jack Welch.

After a month, teams make presentations to Welch and other

senior managers. With the help of consultants and business

school professors, the student executives go around the world

learning to function effectively in teams, finding theinformation they need, and making decisions with little time

and information.


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HOW DO EXEMPLARY ORGANIZATIONS CHOOSE THE

BEST T&D METHOD?

Choice of T&D delivery methods depends on theorganizational culture and values, T&D objectives and

content, the profiles of trainees and trainers, financial

and technological resource availability, time, location,

and political constraints.

Sixty-nine percent of T&D is designed and deliveredin-house, compared to 31% purchased from outside

vendors.

A second T&D methods involves attempts to increase

the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of off-the-job

T&D.

Simulations and off-hour learning like at Boeing is

used for this purpose.


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GE, for example, opens its doors to its customers and suppliers to

participate in its unique "Work Out" training programs as a means of

elevating the quality of the goods or services supplied and reducing

their costs.

Second is using technologies like at IBM during the 1980s,

technology was used to deliver no more than five percent of the

company's T&D. By 1990 that figure stood at 30%, and by the end

of the decade it is expected to rise to 60% of all T&D delivered.

Apple's "electronic campus" draws on the computer manufacturer'sglobally networked information system to facilitate T&D

information exchange.


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HOW DO EXEMPLARY ORGANIZATIONS CHOOSE

THE BEST T&D METHOD?

Federal Express relies on an interactive video network

to deliver training to 45,000 employees and delivers

college courses and degree programs via personal

computers. They even have a leadership seriesbroadcast on an internal television network, FXTV.

Mentoring is used at Corning.


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Kirkpatrick's (1976) survey of 100 companies indicated that while

over 75% of the firms measured participant reactions, fewer than

50% measured knowledge changes or skills learned, and still fewer

measured changes in behaviors (20%) or results (15%).

An Industry Group study (1995) reported that 43% of the firms

measured business results attributable to training and 60% evaluated

behavior on the job relevant to training.

Xerox uses multiple methods, including observations of traineesonce they return to their regular positions, interviews with trainees'

managers, and examination of trainees' post-T&D performance

appraisals, to ascertain whether T&D has impacted job behaviors .


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Johnson & Johnson incorporates 360 degree appraisal (for example,evaluations by the employee's superior, direct reports, peers,

customers, and self-ratings) into their T&D evaluation portfolio.

The evaluation phase of T&D is an area in which even the bestorganizations practice only a minimum level of assessments.

One reason for this is that T&D in exemplary organizations is part of

the organization's mission and values and is not subject to the rules of

cost-benefit evaluation.

T&D represents a belief in the value of continuous learning, that over

time a highly skilled and informed workforce will be more focused on the

organization's strategic goals and values, and more capable, productive,

and creative in ways that might not be immediately measurable.


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One recent study found that training budgets are effected most duringbusiness downturns.

That is not the case, in benchmark organizations.

Ninety-two percent of interviewees indicated that T&D is central to

the organization's goals - so important that only 15% expressed

willingness to cut T&D during tough times.

Budget priorities are tied directly to the strategic mission.


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CONCLUSION

The framework presented in this paper includes structural features,

policies, and practices that together add up to a climate of continuous

learning.

An effective T&D system is a result of the confluence of elements of theT&D framework, and the extent to which they are embedded in the

organization's structures, policies, and practices.

T & D is important because no organization can have the foresight to

predict the precise talents it will need 10, or even five years from now.

How can organizations respond to and overcome the risks associated with

market uncertainty? By developing an internal discipline that creates

readiness for several alternative strategic directions.


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designing management training and development for competitive advantage: lessons from the best

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