If we truly believe that our talents and leaders are essential to the future of our organisations, we have a growing obligation to review how we are supporting their development. Top leaders need their HR people to look outside and understand what is new, what is next, who is driving it and how they are doing it.
First, we need to admit that traditional approaches to talent and leadership development will fail to make us disruption-proof because we need people who can answer different questions, like what will future customers value and how can we best serve them? We need them to imagine new ways to answer these questions.
We live in a transformed and increasingly interdisciplinary world, and many traditional development approaches are no longer viable; some are even broken. Developing people only in functional business areas (marketing, management, finance, HR, etc) and in narrow capabilities and skill sets no longer works. For example, many leaders these days need to understand data better just so they can talk to their data scientists and make better decisions. How do they learn how to do that?
Old-style development was all too often about ticking boxes and learning results for a specific position in a company. In today’s work roles, positions and challenges transform quickly. Development now needs to include leading people (and helping them lead themselves) through this change. In organisations boundaries are blurring, and functional approaches need to be replaced by more systemic development, so leaders and talent can see new opportunities, trends and possibilities.
As companies themselves change, evolve and diversify, new ways of developing large groups are required. Traditional training programmes were developed to be repeatable. This was good for the developer and large companies. This is still great if you want to achieve alignment (a good thing) or indoctrination (not so good).
Top leaders looking to scale development now must ensure not just a common core but also opportunities for individuals to develop capabilities that will make an impact as soon as the opportunity arises. The answer is greater personalisation to support increasingly diverse innovation at speed.
Talent and leadership development approaches must also adjust for the increasingly hybrid world. Most organisations only have their people together for two or three days a week. This is good for staff, but it means much-needed capability development can be slowed down. We now expect our people to work and collaborate virtually. Can we develop them together quickly and virtually, doing new things also? Or are we bringing them back to the classroom?
I don’t think a teenager who collaborates with fellow gamers to complete tasks in the games they play will be happy with the traditional approach. I watch them learn new things and practise them to beat levels quickly. Our youngest leaders and talent already grew up with this facility. Can we expect them to value old-school approaches?
Many top leaders I speak to share their frustration with the lack of digital and technical skills available. We also almost universally accept that digital transformation is non-negotiable. However, how much time do we provide leaders and talent to develop these crucial skills? Yes, we may talk about it and promise to support them. Unfortunately, we rely on them the most so the reality is that they will have to learn these skills on their own time.
What message does that send to the people we value the most? I think it is time for people development leaders to examine the changes required. For any business to prosper and improve, it needs its leaders and talent to prosper and improve with it. We also need to:
- Admit the old-fashioned face-to-face approaches are an increasingly inefficient use of time and do not improve skills significantly quickly enough.
- Ensure our leaders and talent stay with us and increase their contributions.
- Ensure that development — and sharing it — is a natural part of their workday, so that everyone’s productivity increases.
Where to start?
- Get your learning leaders to ask them. Understand their preferences and situation and what and when works for them.
- Look outside. I am a great believer in borrowing good ideas when I see them. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you do have to be willing to let go of the past.
- Ask your senior executive and people leadership peers. There is such great power in community and networks.
- Speaking of community, create them in your organisation. Just like leaders learn best from leaders, your people may learn best from their peers who have been there and done it. Maximise social learning, it’s less boring than classrooms and the free-flowing format allows for greater personalisation and contextualisation.
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAC — Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Center. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa. Talk to us about how SEAC can help your business during times of uncertainty at https://forms.gle/wf8upGdmwprxC6Ey9
