Personnel decides everything. A simple thought, but one that reflects the whole essence of the business. Without a competent and strong team, no company in the world has achieved success. You need a combination of management system and command.
We are business practitioners who have personally implemented projects on digitalization and crisis management, building project and product management from scratch, and overcoming staff resistance. And we worked in different industries: IT, oil production, energy, automotive, construction, woodworking, food industry, public administration, and so on.
And we experienced this thesis ourselves. Plus, we looked at world leaders, how they achieve success, how they are organized and structured. We were constantly looking for an answer to the question: “So what to do with personnel?” As a result, we came to our own systematic approach.
In order to live a quality life, every person must have certain skills - be able to eat, drink, read, write, count, and so on. A chef must cook well, an accountant must count, and a writer must write. But even a writer should be able to add 2+2.
Our systematic approach is a set of knowledge and skills that any organization and any manager needs in the 21st century. That is, it doesn’t matter who – the owner, general director, financial director, chief engineer, department head or production foreman. But what to focus on depends on the personality of the first person, the stage of the organization’s life cycle and its culture, as well as on the specifics of the activity (both the company and the individual manager).
Yes, before it was enough to have a T-shaped set of competencies, when you had one dominant (production, finance, office work), and the rest were formed at the level of “I’ve heard of this and understand the term.” But times change, technology develops. And now the time comes for TTT - a figurative set of competencies. This will be especially facilitated by the development of artificial intelligence, which will automate an increasing number of tasks. As a result, to win this race, you need to have both specialized expertise and the ability to manage, organize people, processes and use modern technologies.
Naturally, not everyone will be ready for this. Some will be flexible and ready for new challenges, while others will resist. As a result, the stratification between the poor and the rich, the successful and the mediocre will intensify even more.
And of course, it is impossible to master everything. You need to choose what to focus on and how to use tools, combine them, and to whom and what to delegate.
Why is corporate education so ineffective?
"The work of helping drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves"
"Twelve Chairs" Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov"
When communicating with various corporate leaders, including HR directors, we almost always hear a simple thesis: “I want the employee to become effective after training.” But how is this possible? What conditions must exist for this to happen?
Competence must be formed
What is competence? It is a combination of knowledge and skill. Yes exactly. This is knowledge of the theory of “what works and how” and consolidation of this with practical skills. Otherwise it won't work. Neither knowledge separately, nor skill separately. At the same time, as world practice and experience shows, it takes from 3 to 12 months to develop competence.
That is, based on this data and how communication is structured (a series of articles here ), we come to the conclusion that we need a high-quality training program/structure and materials (content). There must be a high-quality theory, in the minimum required volume, and a practical part for developing knowledge in practice. It’s optimal to do everything offline. We wrote about barriers to digital communication here.
By high-quality content, we mean materials in a language understandable to the audience (without unnecessary terminology, taking into account the level of preparation of the audience) with prepared visualization (colors, fonts, designs, graphics) and with a high-quality speaker.
There must be motivation to accept and apply new knowledge
Introducing changes and creating motivation is possible in 2 ways. First, we need to change people’s thinking and create in them an awareness of the need for change. Make a connection in your mind: “I will know and do this, which means I can change this and that, and in the end I will feel better in these and those areas.” We wrote about the work of motivation here . This approach is beneficial in the long term, but it is labor-intensive and requires understanding of each employee, individual work with him, preferably a psychologist or coach.
The second is a change in working conditions. That is, it is necessary to create such conditions that it becomes difficult/inconvenient/impossible for a person to work as before. We wrote about practical examples here. An article on basic change implementation tools is also available. Simply put, you need a change leader from the top who is interested in change, as well as process change and regulations, checklists, approaches to decision making, and development of employee KPIs. A person must understand that without changes in work he either will not be able to achieve success or will lose something.
What happens in life? How does the corporate and additional education market work?
Reduced deadlines
The key requirement of 95% of customers: “We have 2 days.” That is, customers want to fit 6 months of programs into 2 days and expect progress from this. Alas, this is impossible. You can get acquainted with the direction in 1-3 days. Show problem areas and provide basic knowledge. Moreover, they are very basic and superficial, without immersion.
No changes in working conditions
When we work with classical and online universities, the main recommendation at the end of the course is the following: “You will either burn out and quit / roll back, or start global changes.” The problem is that people return with new knowledge to old work conditions. And no one, including their managers, wants changes in work. Everyone wants new results, but not changes in processes and approaches.
The same goes for corporate education programs. People are being trained, but there is no change in either management leadership or work organization. As a result, people have no motivation/incentives to change and apply new knowledge.
As a result, this approach has 2 dangerous consequences.
The first is the formation of a culture that is inert to education and change. Cultural resistance is the hardest to overcome and takes the longest time.
Secondly, with each new training that does not bring benefits, people not only lose internal motivation due to psychology , but also at the physiological level lose the ability to develop new competencies.
The problem is that evolutionarily those who could optimize their energy costs survived. And the brain, according to various estimates, spends from 200 to 1000 Kcal per day (stressful situations), that is, 20-40% of energy from total consumption. Moreover, the formation of new connections between neurons is the most energy-consuming process. And as soon as we stop loading our brain with mental work, the process of destroying even current neural connections immediately begins in order to save energy.
As a result, if we learn, but there are no changes in life, then at the physiological level we become immune to learning.
As a result and on the basis of analysis, we came to a systematic approach and formed our own approach to training.
An integrated approach to personnel training
Step 1. Audit
At this stage it is necessary to study the organization, in particular:
life cycle stage;
business specifics;
the team and their competencies, distribution of powers and responsibilities, tasks performed;
the goals of a person (if individual work) and/or an organization and its first person.
This will allow you to understand what tools the organization and employees need to focus on. And also to form management’s understanding of the current situation and involve them in changes.
Step 2: Create training programs
At this stage it is necessary to determine:
is your own competence center necessary?
typical roles of employees in the organization and a competency matrix with the required MINIMUM for training;
what documents and work approaches will need to be reviewed.
This step will create the minimum required training programs. This is necessary in order to minimize employee resistance and provide only those tools that are useful to employees. It will also allow you to create induction programs when promoting employees or hiring new ones.
Step 3. Training
At this stage it is necessary:
organize training, preferably in an offline format: seminars, master classes, business games;
give a combination of practice and theory (analysis of practical examples and explanation of the theory of “how it works”);
Moreover, the theory must be given in a language understandable to employees.
This approach will allow the formation of basic competence: a person will develop a skill that he can use consciously, and not like a trained monkey.
In our work, we analyze either examples from our experience, or we analyze practical examples from the experience of client employees.
The key is:
At least 10% of employees from different departments and management levels must master a certain competency (project management, lean manufacturing, etc.). This is how changes are introduced through change agents;
involvement of the first person (CEO and/or owner). As experience shows, the key limitation of the company is the limitation in the mindset of managers .
Step 4. Consolidate changes and individual support
In the article about introducing changes, we analyzed the Xiu Ha Ri tool, according to which, to develop sustainable competence, it is necessary to work with experts and use new tools under the supervision of experts.
At this stage it is necessary:
identify key employees who are the core of the organization;
organize individual mentoring and coaching support for them for 6-12 months;
review key regulations and processes, approaches to decision-making and development of KPIs, personnel assessment.
It is this approach that allows you to conduct not just regular training, but to minimize staff resistance and begin to transform the company, achieve business results, and maintain staff motivation .
We adhere to a similar logic in our courses. Yes, we have standard programs in areas, but we provide information by module. And after each module there is practical training for 1-4 weeks.
Summary
At the end we want to convey a simple point. The desire to make an employee more efficient / productive with courses in 2 days, and also without changing the thinking of management and the management system, does more harm than good.
And the current situation has been formed precisely because customers are not ready to listen to recommendations and “the customer is always right.”
Let's give an example.
We are often faced with the situation of hiring an expert/manager to tell him what to do. This is typical both for hiring a person on staff and as an outside consultant.
That is, managers/owners employ an expensive expert, but are not ready to listen to him and implement changes. And even more often they hire an expensive manager, but do not give him resources and authority . That is, they want a wizard who, without a budget or team, will do everything himself, but will be called a leader.
If we are talking about attracting outside consultants, then the customer can invite experts 2-3 times and not get results. And the next time he is told what needs to be done differently, how to approach it systematically, he will again not implement changes, but tell the experts how it really should be done.
As a result, if you want to train and develop staff, then you need to allocate time and approach changes comprehensively, starting with the top officials. You need to find experts and listen to recommendations, and not tell them what to do.