Are we missing the real value of employee development?

Abstract: For many organisations, business goals and employee development efforts are treated as two distinct topics. In this article I propose that by combining employee development and business goals into a single motion, not only can we inspire higher levels of performance but make business goals an integral part of personal achievement.

Personal and professional development is a key activity in anyone’s career. By investing in the growth of employees, companies stand to gain new skills, open up the potential of creating new opportunities and markets, or securing competitive advantage. While many companies have the best of intentions as it relates to employee development, they approach it as an entirely isolated topic, an optional extra as it may, which not only results in a disconnected investment, but ultimately a missed opportunity for fast realisation of value back to the organization.

The manifestation of this situation typically occurs in employee performance reviews. Much of this process focuses on a discussion of an employee’s achievements and contributions to organisational goals, progressing to new and upcoming goals, and finally a discussion of developmental areas they are looking to take on. Many organisations follow this process, and the intention of the process is one that celebrates an employees progression, achievements and enables the process of reflection on how they can improve, it is only logical then that a discussion on developmental activities can take place.

A challenge in this approach is that people are involved, and people have emotions, so when the focus of the conversation starts with a discussion on the outcomes their work has contributed to, it is not surprising that a significant amount of emotional energy is expended in this stage of the conversation. By the time the discussion gets to the development section, if the discussion gets there at all because of time constraints, the mind is already racing and the energy drained, both by the employee and manager.

To address this, you could reverse the approach, perhaps shift the development discussion to the front? However without a measured approach, it could become rushed through in order to get to the business outcomes. Instead I suggest that development goals and business goals can actually be combined, and by doing so, benefit both the employee and the company.

Let me introduce something the “marketing me” has come up with to structure an approach to support this new conversation, I call it “DOORS to Success”. The key to the DOORS structure is that it identifies development goals, and connects it to aspirational business goals. The idea of being able to achieve aspirational business goals is attributed to the fact that the goals are aligned to development activities. DOORS itself is an acronym that breaks down into;

D - Development Area: What is the area of development you wish to address? Is it executive leadership, strategic planning, public speaking? Most development efforts fall in to some common areas.

O - Objective\Outcome: What is the outcome to be realised personally in pursuing this development, what specific skills or qualities can be demonstrated through a focus on the effort?

O - Organisational Alignment: How can the investment in this development area be connected to desired results or outcomes for the organization. Put simply, how does the organization benefit and encourage support?

R - Result: What are the tangible results for the business that are tracked to show progress in this development area. This should be a quantifiable result.

S - Stakeholder: Who are the people on the journey of development, ideally it should be someone who can recognise your impact and champion your efforts to others, preferably at a senior level. This stakeholders should be identified based on stakeholder mapping.

DOORS lends itself to a table format, whereupon an employee is able to list a series of development goals, and align each for them to business goals, as can be seen in the picture below.

The DOOR swings both ways

The DOORS structure and conversation lends itself to getting focused on development aspects that can be quickly connected to organisational gains. Typically like most tables you work from left to right.

As an example, an employee might identify they want to develop skills on crisis management, and as they identify the aspects of this development, they suggest that a practical application of that in the company could address how they might handle critical escalations with top customers, the associated measure/s could be reduction in times to close critical cases, or customer satisfaction. An example is outlined below,

What happens if the organisational alignment and results aren't so clear. Well this same framework can help, through a conversation with the manager, an organisational alignment could be identified, or... and this is the benefit of thinking about stakeholders, the manager could identify and encourage a discussion with the stakeholder to help identify a pain point a leader in the organisation may have, not only does this identify an area to address with a development skill, but it also helps the employee to build relationships across the organisation, critical for recognition of efforts, leading to rewards, promotions or new job opportunities.

If efforts fail to identify an organisational alignment, then a very important question can be asked, "Is this a development goal that will be valued by the organization?", and if it isn't perhaps it becomes something the employee pursues as an extra skill, but going in fully aware that it might not be as highly valued in the organisation as they may have perceived. Tough but fair.

The reverse can happen as well, what if there are opportunities in the organisation to be addressed, and the required skills aren't available? Then you work the DOORS framework from right to left, you identify the stakeholder for the issue, understand the issue and what they want to achieve, and identify a team member to address it... after all a DOOR can swing both ways.

Connecting what you COULD BE to what you COULD ACHIEVE

At this point you might be thinking, this is great for the employee, but... "We have already invested in massive resources to do employee development, we do it already why do I need to change?". Well, outside of putting the employee's needs first in the process, think about how a sports person visualises a goal, and trains to achieve it.

I am pretty sure Usain Bolt didn't say in 2007, "I can run 100m in 10.3 seconds, so I am only ever going to run at 10.3 seconds", no, athletes typically visualise the goal they want to achieve, and I am sure at some point Bolt said to himself, "I want to run 100m under 10 seconds.". Once visualised, he committed himself to the training with the support of his coach, tracked progress and overachieved his goal at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, Germany completing the 100m dash in 9.58 seconds.

When you stop and think about it, the employees in our teams are just like athletes, and managers are the coaches directing and facilitating their success, coaching them through the challenges, supporting them along the way.

DOORS helps managers to guide an employees' visualisation of the outcomes that can be realised through the investment in their development. By leading with the conversation of the development of a skill, we are already aligning the employee mindset with what COULD BE achieved by developing these new skills, the opposite is just talking about what you want the employee to achieve in relation to what the organisation wants, and the mindset for achievement is already locked within the constraints of the employees current skillset.

Leveraging a development first approach sets up the employee for higher levels of performance benefitting both employee and organisation.

In Conclusion

At the end of the day, this framework is theoretical, but having had many performance and development discussions, I have observed an opportunity to rethink how we address high performance and employee development, not just in a single conversation, but as an aligned topic that meets the development desires of the employee, and achieves the result expectations of the organisation they work, making the connection more personal and more powerful. I hope you might be able to utilise the idea, and get success from it.