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How do managers learn best? What makes them try new behaviors? When do they seek help rather than resist it?
The Best Learning Challenges for Managers
My experience tells me that managers learn best when they face learning
challenges that:
- Are real business challenges, not ones contrived for training.
- Are part of the manager's operational responsibilities.
- Aim at results for which the manager is personally or mutually accountable.
- Can only be reached by stretching beyond what they know
Sadly, many elegantly designed and otherwise delightful training programs lack these basic elements. In our era of scant resources, the most scarce being management's time and attention, that just won't cut it.
Four good things happen in development initiatives built on these four elements:
- The motivation of managers is a given, not a problem to be solved.
- The need for improved performance drives a manager's need for learning.
- The focus on a business challenge yields results that are real and measurable.
- Real and measurable results pay for the initiative's cost, and then some.
WearGuard's Experience
Consider the example of one of my clients - the WearGuard Corporation.
Over the last several years they have steadily improved quality, productivity, and profits by implementing a team approach to work. We
partnered to create a management development initiative which helps managers both adapt to and lead the new team culture.
Managers jumped to support the effort because:
- The new team approach to work created pressing new skill demands for supervisors and managers.
- Focus groups with employees showed clear room for improvement.
- Benchmarking with industry leaders demonstrated compelling new best practices.
- The managers themselves helped design it.
The program spans four months, involving small, cross-functional groups of just six managers, and features a signature challenge known as the Breakthrough Goal. Participating managers pick a tough and measurable goal which they can achieve in sixty days. The very best goals:
- Engage significant project responsibilities among their people
- Involve the cooperation and support of peers
- Improve relations with other functions or teams
- Apply new technologies or practices.
Measurable Results in Sixty Days
One supervisor chose to increase productivity in production teams while using existing equipment. Working with strong management and
cross-functional support, she challenged a volunteer team to invent and test innovations during a four week trial. The team excelled, increasing productivity by 29% and increasing machine utilization by 16%. These efficiencies, when sustained across other teams, could eliminate the need for one or two additional equipment pods, at a cool half million each.
A supervisor in customer service targeted average call handling time, an internal productivity measure. Her group, at 723 seconds, had long far exceeded the corporate standard of 503. She and her team introduced new practices like peer monitoring, coaching, feedback, and incentives, and together hit their number for the first time ever, without sacrificing quality, while working with fewer representatives during a period of greater call volume.
My personal favorites are the goals that elicit a massive groan from co-workers. That tells you the manager has taken on a true bug-a-boo, which everybody knows, and which has driven everybody crazy, but that nobody really owns. These are the toughest nuts to crack, but when they break, they release tremendous energy and vitality into the organization. The best training for managers is not really training at all. It's smart support for managers to do what they're already committed to do.