A great planning tool

As an L&Der I love learning about different tools and techniques to help groups achieve their goals and objectives. The world of L&D and OD (Organisational Development) cross over immensely and the lines are often blurred where one stops and the other starts. In my experience though the two don't need to be that disparate. OD is about implementing a new way of doing something, or identifying new processes, or facilitating a group in a discussion. L&D is about improving skills across the workforce. I'll discuss this in a later blog. For today though I'm focusing on a particular planning tool which really helps focus a groups efforts.

The Impact/Effort matrix is a good tool for helping a group decide on what actions they should undertake, and often in what priority. Let's explain what it is first, then discuss uses after. Effort is defined as the amount of time/resources you need to put into the task in order for it to be a success. Impact is defined as the potential achievement of a set of objectives. This could be impact to organisation, team or efficiencies.

Effectively you have a 2x2 grid.

1) Bottom left = Low Impact and Low Effort (Think about)

These tasks require little effort but will also have little impact.

2) Top left = High Impact and Low Effort (Quick win)

These tasks will have immediate results and require little effort.

3) Bottom right = Low Impact and High Effort (Forget about)

These tasks will take a lot of effort but the return will be minimal at best.

4) Top right = High Impact and High Effort (Requires planning)

These tasks will produce high return but also require high effort.

This is best used once a group have come together and created a list of tasks they need to action but are unclear about how to prioritise them. Where I have put this tool to good use, within the space of an hour you can see that a team readily identify what needs to happen and the priority associated with each.

You can then plan out the tasks and assign such things as time-frames, potential budget, resources required for completion, and communication plans.

Once you have decided on these, it's then important to assign responsibilities. It seems like an obvious this to say but so often have I seen that the tasks have been prioritised but Bob thinks Terry is going to do it and it should have been Neil doing it all along.

It can also be effective for time management. If you have a way of initially creating a to-do list, this grid can be used in exactly the same fashion as described to help you prioritise which tasks need to be done so your time is effectively managed. In this scenario you would envisage tasks in 4) should be given the larger portion of time (approximately 60-70%), those in 3) given a fair portion of time (approximately 20-30%) and those in 2) and 1) divided accordingly to what you have available.

Why aren't we all highly effective then?

I'm revising a course I'm due to deliver next week called 'Making a Personal Impact'. It's aimed at juniors in the workforce to give them more understanding about how to make a better impression and impact so that they get noticed and become able to move up the corporate ladder. As part of the course I'm doing a piece on what it means to be pro-active and as I was searching the interwebs, I was directed to Stephen Covey's website www.stephencovey.com. He's the author of the best selling book '7 Habits of Highly Effective People'. The book was first published in 1989, has sold over 20 million copies, and has been named the "#1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century" according to his website.

Let's fast forward to the here and now. A lot of authors have written about and blog regularly about how to be effective and the latest ten rules for doing so. I take issue with the continuous rise of such things, least of all because they tend not to be evidence based, more anecdotal, and this means there's no real fix. The better works try to be scientific in their approach but still fall foul of not following an effective or repeatable process. Anyway that's not what I'm blogging about.

My question today is around why we're all not conforming to the multitude of theories in existence that tell us how to be successful and/or effective. Well the answer is pretty simple really. The companies and organisations we work in just don't support these theories. Business 101 tells us that companies are in existence to make money. In order for that to happen, those same businesses look for the kind of people who are willing to put in the time and effort to make things happen. That's a broad brush comment which is meant to include all manner of behaviours such as selling, collaborating, seeking new business, delivering on time, etc.

Part of that demand for success means sometimes those businesses have to overlook the desirable qualities that are oft quoted as being the corner mark of an effective person. Do you want a CEO who is able to make hard decisions, communicate them out and keep a business surviving, or a CEO who spends time ensuring staff are being cared for, relationships are well maintained, and may miss opportunities to sustain business success? I'm trying to present extremes on purpose.

The problem is the habits of highly effective people are often in conjunction with other behaviours that aren't quoted or discussed. Some of these highly effective people are task masters. Some are sticklers for discipline. Some are really picky about details. Some just care about big ideas and big promotions. Some just railroad others into accepting their way of thinking. These are all traits which many executives possess but no-one really takes the time to recognise.

One psychometric tool I've come across does attempt to redress this. It's called the Hogan Dark Side and is developed by Psychological Consultancy Ltd. It's a good tool which encourages seniors to look at what may 'derail' them. What this means is, you may have a trait, e.g. gregarious and energetic, and this may be a great strength of yours. There may be circumstances you encounter which inhibit this strength continuously and make this person derail by forcing them to behave in ways that are uncharacteristic and damaging. For example, they start to go out for drinks far too often, during lunch and then after work, they spend too much time talking to colleagues and socialising rather than doing work, they try to get involved in company social events and miss meetings and deadlines.

But that's just one tool and it's not used widely enough to be recognised by the wider working world. My concern is that people go out and buy self-help books on personal success and how to be the next millionaire but they're not being told the full story of what list of traits are not talked about.

To further this line of thinking, I'm going to make a rather bold statement. We wouldn't have experienced the financial crisis across the world if all those workers in the banking industries truly exhibited the qualities of highly effective individuals, being genuine and not looking for personal financial gain. Instead, those industries promote and expect behaviours along the lines of: look out for yourself, get a big bonus, don't collaborate, keep information close at hand, amongst others.

So where does this take us? If a company wants its staff to truly be displaying the qualities that seem to be in high demand, it needs to be explicit about that in a variety of different forms. The company should have a set of values that are clear and understandable by all. There needs to be a behavioural competency framework that outlines what's expected of everyone in a very practical way. There has to be a clear and unbiased promotion process, succession plan and skills matrix. Review periods have to be mandatory and the opportunities for learning and development made available to every member of staff.

I'm not saying all companies are bad at doing this. If anything the Great Place to Work Survey by the FT shows us clearly that there are a lot of companies striving to get it right and perception from their staff show this to be the case. What I am saying is this needs to be built into every company so that we can have the kind of effective business and quality of workforce that we seem to be looking for.

What digital means for L&D

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is how digital has completely changed the world. That's nothing new, it's been self-evident for the last 5 years with the rise of social networking sites, brands doing more and more of their business on line, customer contact centres having complete on line presence, speeds of internet connectivity now at 50MB, and much more activity that I'm neglecting to mention.

In and of itself this excites me. This has to do with me being a techno geek. Not a true geek that understands jargon, but more to do with being excited about what the technology enables us to do. As was said in a talk I heard recently (by Ian Jindal in a talk about xxx), users of the internet don't care how it works, they just want it to work so they can get on and do what they enjoy - surfing, buying, chatting, etc.

What is that excites me? I guess just the way technology is advancing so much now that you really can't imagine life without our mod-cons. I can recall how things used to be done via memo, then fax, then emails, then instant messaging and now real time updates. Other technological advances went from VHS - Videoplus (which I loved by the way!) - DVD players - VHS and DVD in one players and now blu-ray players. Each new thing was more exciting and life made easy than the last. And that trend is only continuing for the better.

So I'm brought back to how it makes a difference in the world of L&D. Well at first glance L&D has tried to keep up with technology. All training executed pretty much through PPT now. Knowledge management systems were being implemented in organisations throughout the 90s. Computer Based Training has been around for many years - technical and behavioural skills. Online learning has been happening for at least the last 4-5 years with more and more people requiring 24/7 access to training materials. Wikis are now being used to be a storage hold of information. Psychometric tests have been available on-line since the turn of the milennia. Looking at this, we've done a good job no?

Absolutely we have! But is that what digital is about? I don't think it should be restricted to it. L&D is one of those professions where if it doesn't keep up with what technology has to offer, it will fall by the wayside. So what else should we be considering? Well one of the great things about being an online world is the amount of information and data available to us. But why's that important? You can find information on demographics, political influence, internet usage, community centres, pretty much any statistic you could need, is available somewhere. That's important to an L&Der because we have to work with current and correct information. It's what gives us insight into the behaviour of the people we work with which in turn allows us to develop and deliver insightful and effective interventions.

See the essence of an L&Der isn't about delivering training on Assertiveness Skills. It's about knowing the behaviours of the person who needs it, what their likely social patterns are driven by, what their work environment means for them, and developing those skills with that individual so they can recognise and make a definite plan about how to be assertive. In part that comes from good questioning and good facilitation from the L&Der. I believe though there's a wealth of information that digital makes available, that in the absence of that information you could be missing important information which helps you develop your expertise and experience and delivery style.

There's no replacement for face to face training - regardless of the topic. But we can use a variety of tools at our disposal to engage our audience in a multitude of ways. Create a dedicated company training site, roll out an employee engagement survey, have a Facebook page, Twitter account, yahoogroup. All these (and more) help reach an audience. They also help you as an L&Der be focused on and conscious of trends in the areas you are interested in.

Digital has opened up the possibilities to L&D in a way that like brands have to learn how to engage with their customers, L&Ders have to learn how to hear what people need and want from training. If we're not listening to those conversations, reading blogs, being on forums, contributing articles, we will lose a rich flow of information.

The best L&Ders are tapped into digital and know they can't be complacent about such things. Those are the ones you need in your organisation.

Did you understand what I said?

Oh, the woes of my life. I am confronted with daily annoyances in the form of bad English. It isn't hard. Really it's not. At school we get taught how to pronounce our letters, how to write legibly, how to answer a question, and how to have an intelligent conversation. It seems though that for many, these basic skills are not reinforced or encouraged and they quickly forget. Pretty much the moment they step beyond the confines of the educational establishment.

Many statistics are thrown around about the cost of poor or lack of training given to staff, whether or not the education system in the UK is equipping our graduates with the necessary skills needed to be successful, the literacy levels of 11 year olds compared to 15 years ago. I'm doing a search at the moment to identify the cost of poor English skills for businesses. Now I'm not referring to non-native English speakers, I'm talking about all those millions of people born and raised in the UK who have no sodding excuse but to understand and converse in their own bloody language.

Not found a stat yet.

So what's happened that has fuelled these fires that rage deep within my soul? I pose a trail of thought to a colleague. Dear Bob, I've been listening to a webinar about X topic and had a thought that as a business we should have a plan for attending and promoting similar things. This is by no means urgent and maybe something we can talk about later. Bob - I'll try and get in touch.

What? Did you even read my fucking message your sodding moron? Are you incapable of comprehending the very words that are in front of your face? Or is this your way of telling me in the vaguest possible way that this is an area of interest and that indeed we should do such things and the suggestion was positive and productive? Or are you just a twat face?

Much like the response to the question - do you want tea or coffee? Yes. AAARGH.

English is not rocket science. You do not have to understand if variable X impacts component Y while re-calibrating path Z. I deliver a message, you receive message, you respond to message, and the cycle continues. Psychologically speaking, this is how we understand communication at its basic level.

So what does it cost a business for native English users? Time spent venting frustrations on a blog when I could be doing far more interesting things like developing training courses. And telling others about it later. A lot of wasted energy and effort to humiliate Bob. Bob can really piss me off at times. And this is one of those times.

Still no stat found.

Getting the basics right

I was able today to help a colleague with an area of work he was struggling with - time management. It's an oft quoted area of difficulty that junior staff just don't know how to handle. I was also able to help a colleague think about how to set realistic objectives for team members. What came out from both of these conversations is the importance of getting the basics right. And when I say the basics I really do mean the basics.

In the probation period of any new joiner the onboarding process should ensure a range of things are happening so that person is able to be effective in their job. A lot of that though has to do with the essentials of the job role. We can expect someone to hit the ground running when joining, but if we're not giving them the right start, how can we expect them to succeed? A person can only be pro-active so much before they're just facing obstinance and challenges.

So what is this onboarding process all about? Research has shown that an effective onboarding process increases the amount of discretionary effort an employee chooses to exercise. Discretionary effort is defined as the amount of effort an employee chooses to exercise over and above the bare minimum. So, the better the onboarding, the more engaged and productive the employee. Therefore the onboarding process has to be robust, inclusive and wide ranging.

What you'll find is these suggestions seem to cover trivial things but you'll be surprised how much of a difference they truly make.

Here are my suggestions for an effective onbaording programme:

Week 1

- orientation of the building including things like facilities department, toilets, canteen, vending machines, exits and entrances to the building.

- meeting everyone in your department and going for a department/team lunch

- meeting people from other departments who are key to their role

- all the technical stuff (PC, phone) set up and ready before they arrive

- showing them things like file structures, networks, intranets, extranets, wikis, etc

- give them an overview of the organisation structure

- meaningful tasks to start getting on with

- arrange a buddy

Week 2

- setting objectives for the probation period

- introducing them to other departments and getting them to arrange their own meetings

- assigned work relevant to their role

- explain company history and values

- talk them through HR processes and L&D plans

Week 3

- weekly meeting to discuss progress and review their learnings to date

- buddy lunch

- arrange possible shadowing of other team members

Week 4

- weekly meeting

- explanation of competency frameworks

- explanation of different business units, how they contribute to the company and how you work with them all

- evaluation of how they are adapting to the work environment and coaching to improve their effectiveness

This is what should happen in the first month. There should be a lot more that happens which you will need to identify. But if you can get these basics right then things such as performance reviews, giving feedback, coaching, all become easier because you've already covered these aspects. Conversations can then centre on actual job role, tasks, development, etc.