Four myths busted - reimagining leadership development, change management and learning in modern organisations

The case for change

Leadership development, change management, learning and capability uplift are all passions of mine. One of the main reasons is that it’s mostly done poorly in modern organisations, and we urgently need to get better at it. ?But don’t just believe me.

McKinsey’s recent poll of over 2,500 business leaders around the world found that only 5% believed they already had the necessary capabilities to achieve their strategies.? Furthermore, only 25% reported having leaders that were engaged, passionate and able to inspire their employees to the best possible extent (McKinsey, The State of Organisations 2023).

And that’s not through lack of trying. The global market for corporate training is expected to grow at an 8% compound annualised rate between 2023 and 2030, projected to reach nearly A$800 million by 2030 (SkyQuest, 2023).

Two brains are better than one

I’ve long believed that there were synergies, knowledge sharing and bridges to be built between academia and professional practice.? To me, they seem to be two sides of the same coin that can lead to innovation, new forms of knowledge and simply help us to become better at what we do.

So I’ve relished more than five years working across both academia and professional practice, constantly making connections, seeking learnings and discovering the illumination of different perspectives on the world.?

Here’s what I now know for sure as it relates to the domains of learning and development, training evaluation, leadership development and organisational change management.

Myth-buster 1: the assumed ways of working in professional practice do not always have a foundation grounded in evidence-based research.

Consider the 70-20-10 learning methodology widely applied in major organisations, or its cousin, the 4 E’s (taking environment into account along with experience (70%), exposure (20%) and education (10%)).?

It is based on a model invented by McCall et al (1988) through observation of the common practices used by executives to learn new capabilities, ie inductive reasoning.? There is limited evidence that this approach is effective and research has confirmed some significant limitations of this approach (Johnson et al, 2018).

These days, the 70-20-10 model is typically assumed to be the way to go, but this assumption is flawed. How would you design a better learning and development model?

Myth-buster 2: helpful academic models can be better understood and applied in professional practice to deliver improved business outcomes and impact.

Burke & Day (1986) found as few as two out of seventy programs led to an uplift in organisational effectiveness.? This has been endorsed by Collins, 2001 and Lacerenza, 2017, along with a comprehensive review of 83 studies undertaken by Collins & Holton in 2004.

Consider Kirkpatrick’s popular training evaluation model (1959) which is aged but remains delightfully simple and comprehensive.? It covers the four key areas of engagement, learning, performance and impact.? I’m still amazed at how much organisational training has no measures at all, and when it does, practitioners often give up after the first or second areas, with the others relegated to the ‘too hard’ basket.

Encouragingly, there is abundant academic research and debate on the third and fourth areas of Kirkpatrick’s model, arguably the holy grails of training answering the questions of how to measure the difference training makes to individual performance and organisational impact.

If the academic rigour exists, how would you design training evaluation to better evidence return on investment (ROI)?

Myth-buster 3: leadership development can no longer be effectively undertaken independent of context and the environment in which leaders operate.

Three decades ago, a founding voice in leadership development research, John Gardner prophesised that by “the mid-twenty first century, people will look back on our present leadership development practices as primitive” (Gardner, 1990).?

I believe the COVID-19 pandemic signalled a tipping point for organisations that is yet to be fully acknowledged.? Global consulting firm Gartner alluded to this when it declared that “The [training] approaches that were successful in 2019 are ill-suited for the workforce of 2023.”

My own lived experience over two decades has seen leadership development programs that span the full spectrum from ground-breaking to time-wasting.? I’m too weathered now to sit through programs that are generic, disconnected to strategy and irrelevant to me personally. And I suspect I’m not alone.

Since 2019, through a methodology called action research, I have collaborated with practitioners and academics to create, refine, test and repeat a new model of leadership learning design on four occasions in professional practice, academic and research settings.? I’m about to embark on a fifth action research project with a not-for-profit organisation with the latest iteration of this learning design.?

It is efficient for time-poor participants, simple (but not easy), in the flow of work, measurable, relevant to context and best of all, the leader gets to choose their own adventure and customise learning to their needs.? Applying all four of Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation metrics, it has proven to work time and time again.?

I’ll share more about this in future posts and articles. For now, how would you re-design leadership programs to have a material impact on strategic outcomes?

Myth-buster 4: Any change management framework or model developed before the COVID-19 pandemic needs to be updated and reset.

In a recent poll I conducted with a Change Community of Practice at a multi-national insurer, all responded with strong agreement that compared to pre-pandemic times:

·???????? There is more complexity in organisations,

·???????? Leaders are under more pressure to do more with less,

·???????? The change load has increased, and

·???????? Change fatigue has increased.

The popular Prosci change management certification, costing over A$6,000, teaches you to apply the ADKAR model of change.? It is not grounded in academic research but based on Prosci’s own practitioner surveys.

This leads to a number of limitations resulting in reducing the complex systems of modern organisations and their ambitious transformation agendas to a three-phase process that assumes:

• there is only one change happening to stakeholders at a time;
• you can work with stakeholders individually;
• that the change happening is the most important thing happening to stakeholders;
• change management is a linear process;
• that people leaders know how to lead change;
• change fatigue is not a consideration … need I continue?

I appreciate I’m potentially over-simplifying and I confess I have not undertaken the certification. However, the reality is that the major change models (ADKAR, Lewin’s three stages change model, Kotter 8-step change model etc) fall foul of these assumptions.? They were devised in a simpler, less complicated world, and mostly devoid of the solid foundation of being tried and tested with academic rigour.

(Spoiler alert: Following on from developing a new leadership learning design approach, my aim in 2024 is to do the same for organisational change management.)

What does a modern change management approach look like to you?

We need more reimagining, reinvention, resetting and revisiting than ever before. Now is not the time to accept the status quo.

Employers estimate that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years (World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2023). Our ability to effect change and uplift capabilities in our people has never been more important.

My wish for 2024 is that this is the year for us to work together in networked coalitions of the willing to challenge the status quo in our ‘new normal’ world and collaborate to rethink what we do and how we do it in these important professions.?

If you’re up for the challenge, post a comment, bust another myth and share your passion!

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