HOW TO DEVELOP TALENT AT ZERO COST  

Last week I wrote a piece about how to win the war for talent by creating learning and development pathways, using a simple talent mapping tool.

This week I thought I’d extend on this by sharing a bit more about how to create “strategies to increase performance” that cost nothing yet deliver big benefits – both to the business and to employees.

Development conversations are where leaders and their people identify development goals and actions that enable ongoing learning and career growth. Leaders who take a proactive approach to the development of their people signal that they care about more than just standards of performance and business outcomes, but also about people and personal outcomes.

As it turns out, development conversations are critical to both performance and wellbeing. Jim Clifton and Jim Hartner from the Gallup Organisation – who lead the world’s largest ongoing meta-analysis of human potential and business unit performance – recently published their new book “Wellbeing at Work”. In their book they noted that one of the single biggest discoveries Gallup has ever made is this:

“What the whole world wants is a good job. People want a job that uses their God-given strengths every day with a manager who encourages their development.”

The good news is, encouraging development need not be costly nor time consuming. While formal training is important, where most learning actually occurs, is on the job.

The 70/20/10 model for learning was created by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger to demonstrate that only 10% of learning comes from formal learning interventions, 20% from working with others, and a whopping 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experiences. We need to remember that this is a ‘model’ and not meant to be an exact science – with the philosophical intent being that where we embed learning is through on-the-job experiences.

A Team Performance Plan (as outlined in the attached video) is the outcome of a talent mapping exercise, plus development conversations between leaders and their teams.

Well-considered on-the-job development goals and actions deliver benefits both to individuals and to the organisation:

For example:

  • For someone whose goal is to deliver their sales budget for the quarter, a learning goal may be to develop a call cycle plan.
  • For someone whose goal is to launch a new range of muesli, a learning goal may be to produce a market and competitor report.
  • For someone whose goal is to implement a new customer service response system, a learning goals may be to research all the current systems in the market and provide a recommendation.
  • For someone whose goal is to prepare the monthly board report, a learning goal may be to shadow their executive in a section of the board meeting and discuss their insights afterwards.
  • For someone whose goal is to improve the customer satisfaction rating, a learning action may be to respond to customer complaints and develop a response procedure for certain categories of complaints.

This doesn’t mean companies can suddenly drop training and development budgets. Formal training and coaching / mentoring have their place and at times require investment in external resources. What this does mean is that not having a large training budget, or any budget at all, need not be a barrier for enabling on-the-job learning and talent development.

The key to all of this is just having development conversations and creating a system for this so that these conversations become part of the business’ DNA. They’re not an adjunct or what we do “when we have time” (which is never). They are an essential way to getting business done and creating intrinsic value for people.

References:

Clifton, J., & Hartner, J. (2021). “Wellbing at Work: How to build resilient and thriving teams”. Gallup Press, New York.

Lombardo, M, & Eichinger, W. (1996). The Career Architect Development Planner (1st ed). Lominger, US.

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