Training and Development – A R&D Leader’s Perspective

“Our Product is Steel; Our Strength is People.” If you lived in Ontario, you would recognize this slogan.  It is the slogan for a steel company in Hamilton named Dofasco. I had the pleasure of working at Dofasco as a summer intern many years ago, and have always been enamored with that slogan, because in order for an organization to flourish, I am convinced that “our strength is people.”

Many R&D staff wants more out of the job than just the job itself – they want to learn and grow their skills on the job.  This learning and growing not only motivates staff, but also helps the company towards better retention and applying the new skills to current (and new) projects and products.  As R&D leaders, we should make many opportunities available to staff – there are no excuses to avoid this important topic, even if you already have HR responsible for training and development.  Here are some thoughts, based on what we did at NGRAIN, where I was CTO and VP of Engineering.

Conferences, workshops and webinars

Because we usually have a limited budget for training, we should always be on the lookout for free webinars, as well as the most beneficial conferences and workshops – that’s obvious.  The limited budget can work to our advantage, since most conferences and workshops remain relatively the same each year, or information about them exists way ahead of time for the conference or workshop. The team can, at the beginning of the yearly budgeting process, do some minimal homework to identify the most relevant conferences and workshops to us, and prioritize the best ones to attend to fit the budget.  Then at the start of the financial year, we already know what venues we are targeting to enhance learning, and assign the most appropriate staff to go.  Conference or workshop planning does not need to be ad-hoc. Any important conferences or workshops that did not make the list this year will be added to the list for consideration for next year’s equivalent planning (call it technical debt in terms of training and development).

I do have a rule, however, that anyone we send to conferences/workshops needs to give an informal presentation to the company about what they learned, so we can spread the wealth of knowledge, and initiate useful conversations regarding adopting some of the techniques.  If this presentation is not done, I promised that this particular staff member would no longer be sent to conferences and workshops again.  I consider this to be a fair tradeoff.

Share your wisdom

I am more than happy to share my wisdom, mentor, give talks on technical and management topics, and do internal training.  In fact, I did a bunch of video recordings, going over some product information, production workflows and processes important to the company. We have used some as part of the on-boarding materials for new staff.  This sort of internal training does not need to be professionally done; it just needs to convey the correct and relevant information.  I also use this on-boarding material as a discussion topic for the first set of 1:1 meetings with the new staff.

We also started a monthly meeting series entitled “Ask your CTO.” The attendees are staff from sales, marketing, PR, product management, project managers, etc. Basically, the attendees represent the frontlines of dealing with clients, and they need to be armed with the best and most up-to-date technical information. This is a forum of which good exchanges, discussions and information dissemination can occur.  The meeting can either address a particular topic (e.g. evaluation of a competitor, whether certain technology or crazy idea is real or science-fiction, etc.) or a free-for-all question period in terms of what technical questions have hit sales or marketing in recent business dealings, and how I would answer those questions.  Though they may learn some useful things, I too have gained a lot more knowledge, especially how we are being perceived from our own frontline staff. 

The side benefit of doing the above pertains to relationship building, which the leader also needs to focus on (perhaps a topic for a future post).

Staff can educate each other

We held monthly get-togethers for all technical staff so they can share useful information between each technical group.  Many are so busy and focused that they rarely find time to learn about the technical specifics of what others might be up to.  There are a lot of technical activities going on in parallel, so this is a format in which they find out what else is technically happening.  Though I initiate these get-togethers, it is rare that I need to do much of the talking (and that’s good!).  The engineers start a topic (not just an update, but can be a technical question, or a technical trend, or lessons learned from our hackathons, etc.), and off they go.  Everyone, including myself, learns a lot from the discussions.

Hackathons are also a great way to encourage learning and sharing amongst teams.  However,  because some staff is so committed to their tasks (and the fear of missing deadlines), I actually had to enforce the need for quarterly hackathons and assured the teams that it is minuscule to miss 2 days per quarter on attacking deadlines.  All Hackathon ideas are evaluated afterwards whether we want to continue researching on those prototypes, which may turn out to be new business opportunities.

External connections

Having invited speakers in the office is a special opportunity for the staff.  The even better news is that there are plenty of such opportunities that cost little to no money.  For example, invite professors from your local universities and colleges; when there are conferences or workshops in your city, check out who is coming to town and ask whether that person is willing to provide a talk; ask the company’s technical advisors to speak on the industry trends.  I don’t recall getting a NO answer from any of the above sources of invited speakers, and I have enjoyed each and every one of the talks.

Certifications

In certain industries (e.g. government, defense), certifications are necessary to show technical qualifications to perform the actual work.  For example, a Project Management Professional (PMP) is required for project management work; an Information Systems Professional (I.S.P.) is required for architectural work, etc.  While some certifications can be a minor pain to acquire and maintain, all certifications allow our staff to learn more, and they can also make staff more technically attractive in certain industries.  Even company-wide certifications, such as International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), can provide good learning opportunities for staff as well.

Motivation for the R&D leader

Not only is training and development beneficial and enjoyable to your staff, you should also notice by now that you, the R&D leader, are a big benefactor.  If you were to reread this post, consider the R&D leader’s benefits of learning, improvement, relationship building, internal communication, team morale, and new business opportunities.