Development Planning ... for Real
The temptation to cut corners arises constantly. If a task is of minor importance, you certainly should give into this temptation -- without going so far as to be negligent -- in order to move on to more important things. But it's easy to kid yourself that something is relatively unimportant when it's not.An example that comes immediately to my mind is planning for employee development. To my surprise, I have seen development planning all too often given short shrift even though it is clearly not a minor responsibility.
For both managers and employees, taking time every quarter to discuss, agree on, and evaluate progress in development activities is vital for making sure desirable individual and organizational capabilities are being cultivated.
The worst dereliction in this area that I have personally observed involved a company whose managers would routinely mislabel sales objectives for the coming year as "development objectives." (That was the managers who actually bothered to address development planning at all. Many did not.)
Instead of discussing with employees what the individual employees' top-priority development needs and aspirations were, these managers passed up the opportunity to help gird for future competitive battles.
It's easy to delude yourself that setting sales and other business goals, and then being tough in pressing employees to meet them, will produce growing competence simply through monetary incentives and accumulating experience. The strongest companies in any industry are not so delusional. They make sure their managers know how to accelerate learning by working with employees to plan the best ways to build commercially valuable skills and knowledge.
Labels: Employee development, Employee performance management
posted by Karen Nelson @ 8:01 AM
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