How do you design and deliver effective OD training and coaching programs for your talent development needs?

It's also vital that OD professionals partner with stakeholders when identifying and assessing needs, goals, gaps, challenges, and opportunities. This work should not be done in a vacuum and only from an OD lens. Leaders and learners must be invited to the table to determine what training and coaching will be most impactful and add value to the strategic direction of the organization.

NO! This analysis should not be the first step, in my opinion. Before one begins to consider 'what' you need to REALLY understand the 'why'. Dive deep into your strategy, engage your executives to understand what keeps them up at night. This provides the business landscape - now and future state, upon which you can begin to research what interventions will add the most value, address and resolve the pain points and align with the business aspirations. Without this understanding and foundation, you'll be doing busy work, but not necessarily the essential, strategic and value-adding work.

Ensure that whoever the stakeholders are, they are absolutely explicit about their needs. Then, run through scenarios to predict the potential outcomes. When complete, utilise solid communication links to check out the direction with the people. Feedback, adjust if required and then build.

One thing we don't always consider at the start of a project is the leadership and organizational tolerance for our solutions. Is the leadership committed and willing to engage throughout the project? Is the audience able to devote time and attention to the project? Are there financial resources to see the project to completion? From the OD consultant perspective, is the organization prepared to stay engaged and go deep enough to create lasting impact? If not, we may just be offering palliative care rather than a cure.

The findings or results from an organizational capacity or training needs assessment will be a bedrock for designing and delivering effective OD training and coaching programs. The learning process and learning style may differ for employees therefore it is important to identify the right capacity-building and methodology that will work best for employees when designing the OD training or coaching program for them.

Taking a systems lens is important when considering the design of interventions. Through the needs analysis, questions should ultimately uncover the root cause of the business problem that needs to be addressed. This may include training or learning as part of the solution but other factors including culture change, appropriate expectation setting, incentives, and process improvements should also be considered. Training alone is often not enough to drive sustainable behavioral change.

Vehemently agree. I find Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg approach to Program Reframing an additionally effective approach to bringing focus to issue identification and solution finding.

OD isn’t “training”. Development/ training may be an element of an OD approach, but not the whole thing. OD needs to take account of wider systemic factors like strategy, culture and even processes/ systems. So start with a real diagnostic approach, don’t just focus on the skills gap - you may find that it’s a structural or systems issue rather than just a behavioural/ skills piece.

Practical application is a must in any program design. Buddies/mentors is another. When you can provide all participants with a task to complete (i.e. a thing to do to practice what was learned) and have their training partner/buddy there to help, guide, coach, and support, you are much more likely to see lasting improvement.

Culture Eats your programs for breakfast :) Therefore while designing your programs you need to promote a learning culture and instill the environment that supports learning; while strengthening it via integrating with other business processes and performance management cycle. Learning process should not be a stand-alone ; it should be Integrated with the performance management system to create a seamless connection between learning and on-the-job performance.

Utilize Various Learning Modalities: ? Combine different learning methods, such as workshops, seminars, e-learning modules, and on-the-job training, to create a well-rounded program. ? Incorporate case studies, simulations, and real-life scenarios to enhance learning.

Learning can be maximized, if given the right exposure, From exposure I mean the environment of the training intervention, 1. Selecting the right venue 2. Keeping the right people in a group 3. Selecting the right time for the training Last but not least, food in the training, These can enhance the overall training experience, and participants end up remembering most out of it.

One must know his Audience , their purpose to be in training, your purpose for delivering this training and Obviously why organisations need this training. This can be helpful for creating any content for ...

One approach which lends authenticity and builds engagement is to cascade a training programme from the top, so have the most senior leaders undertake it first, symbolically demonstrating this is worth while and not tokenistic. Is also possible for those who have been trained to participate in the teaching for the next layer, which adds more weight to its perceived value, and can help embed learning.

I have found that people are now craving more live trainings vs asynchronous delivery. Live can be via Zoom/Teams or in-person. When you deliver the training live and in-person, you also open more opportunities for building and strengthening relationships between team members.

This ongoing examination and evaluation of your programs is a critical step! You need to identify what types of outcomes to measure and how often. For example, you could measure: Employee satisfaction levels (eNPS score), Employee engagement scores (ie: Gallups or GPTW scoring), # of Suggestions submitted to a suggestion box, speed to completion (lower cycle time), internal mobility metrics (promotions/transfers), increased revenue (because of optimized processes). When done well, OD programs can be a business' competitive advantage for retaining, growing, & attracting top talent. Ongoing evaluation would ensure that your set of OD initiatives are effective in their current state and able to evolve to changing business environments.

This requires a governance model that help through collecting and analyze data from various sources, including participants, stakeholders, the organization, and the environment. Use both quantitative and qualitative methods, such as surveys, tests, interviews, observations, and case studies. Evaluate the programs at different levels, including reaction, learning, behavior, and results. Report your findings and recommendations clearly, concisely, and in an actionable manner. This comprehensive evaluation helps measure the program's effectiveness and impact, providing valuable insights for continuous improvement.

If you have carried out an effective analysis at the start of the OD process, you should know what the performance/outcome metrics should be. This will inform how you capture evaluation data and where from.

I'm reminded of the business term "ticklers". What opportunities do we have to nudge learning and practice while meeting the learner where they are? What social platforms do they engage with while at work? What tools can we leverage to remind them of the skills they learned? A holistic marketing approach that supports their learning journey and behavioral change can impact retention and ROI.

David Marquet's Leadership Nudges are a great example of that "tickler" and consumables approach from exposure to application of concepts. Here's the link: https://intentbasedleadership.com/category/leadership-nudge/

In my experience this is typically the step most often neglected. Folks build and deliver great programs but fail to go back and ensure that all their goals or expectations for the program were met.