As the calendar year comes to an end, you’re either looking for ways to spend the rest of your development budget, or you’re planning on how to use it next year.
If you don’t have a budget set aside for development, then make sure you get one next year! If it’ll help, consider sharing this article with your boss. After all, leaders are learners, aren’t they?
But what if you’re the one approving proposals for development?
What if you’re the one who sets the budget? Have you ever considered that the types of proposals coming in, the amount given to each team member, and how your team looks at development reveals a lot about your culture?
If you’re leading a team, here’s the tension that you face as it relates to development:
On the one hand, if you develop your people, they might outgrow their job, realize the weaknesses on your team, and/or now have a new set of skills that’ll set them up for another role somewhere else.
On the other hand, if you don’t develop your people, their performance can stagnate, they might not innovate, and you’ll essentially be cultivating a culture of mediocrity, maintenance, or at best, incremental growth.
So what are you to do? To develop or not to develop?
Ken Robinson, in his book Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative, puts it well.
Many organizations are finding it difficult to find the people they need. When they do find them, they often have trouble keeping them. Executives say there is an increasing shortage of the people needed to run divisions and manage critical functions, let alone lead companies. This problem has been building for some time. One of the consequences is that organizations are fighting a war for talent.
The corporate consultancy company, McKinsey, worked with the human resources departments of 77 large US companies in a variety of industries to understand their talent-building philosophies, practices and challenges. Their original study included nearly 400 corporate offices and 6,000 executives in the “top 200” ranks in these companies. It also drew on case studies of 20 companies widely regarded as being rich in talent. Three-quarters of companies had said they had insufficient talent sometimes, and all were chronically short of talent across the board. The study concluded that executive talent has long been an under-managed corporate asset. Companies that manage their physical and financial assets with rigor and sophistication have not made their people a priority in the same way. Few employees trust employers to provide useful opportunities for professional development. Most take a short-term view of training needs. Only a third of employers provide training beyond the job. In a rapidly changing environment, they worry that their best talent will be poached by other companies. They are wary of investing in developing their own talent since they fear it will primarily benefit their competitors. Staff turnover is often high and vacant posts are filled with outside talent. According to search professionals, the average executive will work in five companies; in another ten years it may be seven.
Most companies choose to develop powerful recruitment and retention processes to get the “right people” on board. The problem with the short-term model is that “it does nothing to prevent the exodus of the rest—those whose talents are undeveloped. It assumes a world with an unlimited supply of talent…that does not mind working in businesses where development is not deemed a priority.” Even so, according to McKinsey, companies are engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain a defining characteristic of the competitive landscape for decades to come. Yet most are ill prepared, and even the best are vulnerable.
What culture of development have you cultivated on your team?
Are you the one that suggests development opportunities, or does your team initiate themselves? When you suggest opportunities, is it met with surprise? Skepticism? Or a sense of gratitude?
If the 70:20:10 principle is true (if you haven’t heard about it, click here), then what are you doing to provide the best of the best learning opportunities for the 20% and 10%, so that the 70% of on the job development is maximized?
And here’s the thing about the tension as it relates to development:
If you cultivate an engaging culture of development, you don’t need to worry about other teams or organizations poaching your people. They won’t want to leave! And if they do leave, they’ll want to come back because they’ll quickly realize that teams and organizations that emphasize ongoing learning and development are few and far between.
So back to the original question, to develop or not to develop?