It's a Scandal! Manager Training Exposed! [Implementation Part 4]

This is Part 4 of a series on research that can help your company get better at implementation. Companies that are more effective at implementation -- of business strategy, pay for performance, change, communication -- deliver higher Total Shareholder Return. 

The source of real competitive advantage is the ability to implement practices that other organizations find difficult to implement.

 

In my recent posts we learned that the Most Admired Companies, as tracked by Hay Group and Fortune, act as if they are more committed to achieving their business results than other Fortune 500 companies. 

71% report they are effective at implementing their company's business strategies, compared to 47% of their peer group. In a related finding, 94% report that they have a clearly defined global approach to performance management, compared to 74% of their peers.

How do they pull this off? There are lots of contributing factors, but there is one implementation method that we all rely on -- managers. As we all know well, leaders may have great strategic ideas but managers are the people who actually make the strategy happen. They implement annual priorities through objective setting, communication, feedback and performance management.

How do we prepare managers? We sure send them through regular bouts of training, don't we? Towers Watson wanted to learn more about manager training in its 2011 - 2012 Change and Communication ROI Study. TW has spent 10 years comparing companies that are more effective at communications -- and as a result, delivering higher Total Shareholder Return -- to less effective communicators.

In this report we find out that more effective companies spend more time preparing managers to act in support of the company's Vision and Values than less effective companies do. No big surprise.

But, check out the bombshells here.


Bombshell #1-- Less effective companies spend almost as much time training managers on performance management as highly effective companies do. So, commitment to training is not a real differentiator. Pretty much all of us are busy getting managers to sit through the PowerPoint experience.

Bombshell #2 -- The differentiator is the effectiveness of the training. Less effective companies have barely one good word to say about their manager training, even though they are devoting a lot of attention to it. Time wasted, it seems.

The most effective companies have a relatively good level of confidence in the effectiveness of their manager training. It could be better, of course, but what training program couldn't be improved?

The point is that when you ask your managers to spend time finding out what you think is good for them, you should be very sure that you are using their time wisely. Garbage in is garbage out, and managers have a right to resent any waste of their time.

Design training so that you are targeting behavior change. e.g. writing better objectives, linking objectives to strategy, coaching employees on their role, etc. Give them training that is interactive and gives them a chance to practice and get feedback. Then measure your effectiveness in concrete ways like auditing objectives, rolling up objectives for exec review, and then adjust follow-up training/communications accordingly.

That's what the highly effective companies are doing. They have a strategy, not just a bunch of information to shovel at managers. Implementation -- of manager training, in this case -- is their acknowledged source of competitive advantage.

Margaret O'Hanlon is founder and principal of re:Think Consulting.  She has decades of experience teaming up with clients to ensure great Human Resource ideas deliver valuable business results.  Margaret brings deep expertise in total rewards communications and change management to the dialog at the Café. Before founding re:Think Consulting, she was a Principal in Total Rewards Communications and Change Management with Towers Perrin. Margaret is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Pacific Plains Region. She earned her M.S. and Ed.S. in Instructional Technology at Indiana University. Creative writing is one of her outside passions, along with Masters Swimming. 

Comments

[Dan Walter]

Great article Margaret,
I would guess that most of those companies with ineffective training programs THINK they are doing it right.

We tend to put time and effort into something and then apply value to it. We seldom rational evaluate that value, and even when we do, we tend to ignore the data since we KNOW what we did was right.

More people need to learn how to help others learn. They need to be open to that fact (as shown by data) that their training doesn't work well, and more importantly that other companies in the same position have figured out how to do a good job training.

I often hear HR and Comp people say about their managers, "they just don't care", or "they just can't seem to understand what we are teaching them. Sometimes is the messenger that needs to be corrected.

[Margaret O'Hanlon]

Dan, thanks for adding more insight into how the ineffective training comes about. So many training programs emphasize what managers should know. In reality, the essence of the training should be what they need to do and how to help them build the confidence to do it.

When the goal of training is to inform, and nothing else, we can count on bored managers and no new behaviors. It's not the manager's fault, it's the logical outgrowth of our approach.

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Adult education in general and supervisory training in particular is not easy to accomplish effectively. The best methods are well known but rarely heeded, just as folks heed the speed limit signs. ASTD, the specialized professional society for training, devotes far more attention to this topic than any other. Every compensation person should either take ASTD courses on training methods or read the practical books and articles on the subject of "learning."

Basics like lesson plans, pre/post testing, feedback loops, intermittent subsequent reinforcement methods and learning confirmation tests are vital. They should be second nature to the HR/comp practicioner. When those basic steps are not known and not implemented, well designed systems will tend to fail the moment they reach the target audience.

[Margaret O'Hanlon]

ASTD is a great suggestion, Jim. Training, like writing, is easy to do, but difficult to do effectively. ASTD provides the kind of preparation that professional instructional designers receive in graduate courses. Compensation practitioners would find them interesting (lots to learn on motivation and engagement) and full of tactical ideas.