Two experiences across the last five years, and one conclusion, have stayed with me as I consider how best to support my clients as they try to pursue their business goals and their organizational development goals.
I'll start with the conclusion ---- which is that too many organizations separate those two sets of goals and see them as fundamentally different things. But they are inextricably linked.
Now, let me go back to the experiences that led me to those conclusions.
Two very different companies --- one a start-up that had stalled and the second an incumbent in a stalling industry. Both companies had clear ideas of where they wanted to go and diligently prepared strategic plans that outlined product innovations, new markets, new messaging and the deployment of resources. As diligent as those plans were, both companies struggled with answering a fundamental question: can you achieve the goals in the plans with the talent you have in place?
Struggling to answer that question, or answering it in the negative, leads to skepticism about the likelihood of success with regard to the plan. The probability of success decreases, and I suspect that most people would agree.
In my opinion, it’s one of the reasons for the general cynicism regarding strategic planning to begin with.
But I was struck how in both circumstances the business leaders of each company shrugged off the question. It’s not that they weren’t savvy business people. It’s that they approached the issue as one in which the strategic plan was an objective reality that needed to be reached and people would just have to work harder, manage activities more wisely, collaborate better, and well, just get it done. So that was the business goal side of it, and as for the development goals, well, there were classes for that, right?
At the time, that approach struck me as being very much like the track coach who urges his charges to “run faster!” Obviously, the right goal, but not very helpful advice.
You see, although they recognized that the achievement of a business goal required changed behavior, they didn’t explicitly act to connect the business goals with the development goals. So they did not think to connect the projects, implementations and activities ---all the “business” that would need to get done to hit targets --- with “learning experiences” that would drive the changed behavior and sustain it.
So I would propose that digging into the question of whether a plan can be achieved with the talent in place proactively solves a serious business problem while also solving a serious organizational development problem.
The business problem is that too many strategic plans get put on a shelf and gather dust while the L&D problem is that development programs often struggle to show a return on investment. I would suggest, then, that marrying the business opportunities embedded in the strategic plan to learning opportunities is a great way to win on both the achievement of business targets and learning goals.
Now, let me be clear about what I am not saying. I am NOT saying that L&D teams don’t try to align with business units and their goals. They do. In fact, the teams I have worked with are incredibly diligent about having conversations with business leaders about what their “learning needs” are for the coming operating cycle.
But much like that great film with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson, Lost in Translation, in which the main characters --- Murray, a fading actor trying to sell Scotch in Japan, and Scarlett Johannson, a young, recently married woman with no direction in life --- both struggle to find a path forward for themselves, it’s easy to be “in conversation” with people and make no connection, to flounder about without purpose, to stall. It’s easy to be in a “class” and not have learning occur.
So in those conversations with our line leaders we tend to speak in our own “learning” language. The business leaders speak “business” and something gets lost in translation. They think they need “classes” and we know they need “changed behavior”.
But they pay the bills, so we reach on our shelf of commoditized content and give them a class.
The box has been checked. Success, right?
Except that behavior does not change. Targets are not reached, and everyone wonders why the plan failed. And now it’s time to plan again.
So with my clients I offer a modest proposal --- moving forward, let’s find a way to isolate 2-3 business goals the line wants to achieve. Imagine needing to:
· Drive product innovation into a stale product catalog
· Expand the company’s global footprint by moving into a new geographical market
Let’s decompose those goals into very specific behaviors that must change. So maybe we would need to:
· Increase creativity during the ideation stage & drive better information seeking behaviors
· Create more rigor around the assessment and monitoring of already launched products
· Improve collaboration across flash teams deployed in the moment to solve business problems
Then let’s create a learning experience or sets of experiences that will support the changed behavior and in fact not just teach “what to do” but “show what the changed behavior looks like”. So perhaps:
· Create project kick-off events that identify the behaviors needed for success in the projects
· Institute “simulations” that allow team members to practice the behaviors safely
· Deploy peer support protocols that allow teams to drive the use of those behaviors in their connected workflows
Building on that, let’s embed the monitoring of those behaviors in the workflow of the projects, implementations and activities that support the workflow intended to achieve the stated business outcomes. And then let’s pull up with business leaders to discuss both the achievement of business and development outcomes.
If we do this within the context of a recognize – extract - reflect – apply - share learning framework, we might be able to ensure that nothing gets lost in translation. More importantly, we should be able to achieve both business and development goals.
