Many companies spend a huge amount of time and resources crafting the next brilliant strategy – only to see it end in failure. The plan is implemented with much fanfare and then it falls flat on its face, and said company spends buckets of more money trying to hit the reset button and go back to way things were before.
The corporate brain trust goes at it again, but this time the game plan is met with considerable employee resistance. Why? No one understands how they fit into the strategy or how to implement the game plan. If employees don’t buy into a strategy and are trained to make it work, it’s dead on arrival. The best strategy does not execute itself – people do. It’s imperative that training and strategy work hand-in-hand to drive success. Most of this is well known, but oftentimes corporate training and development and corporate strategy seem to go in different directions. So why can’t training and strategy get along?
There are a few basic reasons for this. Historically, heads of business and strategy traditionally don’t understand training and development, and vice versa. That being said, the two are so critically reliant on each-other, it’s time for them to get along. Let’s examine some possible solutions.
As a first and critical step, all management and/or leadership training should demonstrate the direct effect on business outcomes. If management or leadership training doesn’t provide an opportunity to experience a direct impact on the business, it’s not strategic. For example, if a leadership development program for middle managers doesn’t demonstrate the impact on profit potential, it probably isn’t strategic. Companies are in the business to make money. As a result, the training participants need to better understand how this training impacts the bottom line.
Strategy is 25 percent planning and 75 percent action. Action means how to implement the strategy. Corporate executives care about getting the team aligned behind the action of the strategy. The challenge comes when employees question how they’ll fit in and how their jobs might be impacted. If training could give participants an opportunity to experience change in advance, this would greatly reduce the resistance. As a result, when training is able to implement action learning modules that demonstrate how roles change and why they are important, the strategic execution will actually accelerate.
Finally, giving managers exposure to basic business acumen has astounding results. When managers understand the fundamentals of how business works (even more effectively, how their specific company works), they will better understand how to help implement the new strategy. Managers who have solid business fundamentals are more effective and flexible. Strategy development and implementation is mostly about change. Managers who possess sharp business acumen skills are more resilient to the strategic change.
Most managers want to do a good job. They want to help the company and continue growing within the company. Strategic change often fails because managers don’t understand the simple questions of, “what, why and how.” Training and strategy could get along better if the two divisions act as one. Strategy is developed with the idea of training, and training is developed with the concept of strategy.
Giving managers a day where they can feel the impact training has on the business is helpful. Companies are starting to use tools such as business simulations to accomplish the task. When managers feel the impact of training in addition to experiencing how they fit in, the end result is even more valuable. When strategy development gets along with training and development the bottom line impact will quickly grow.
William Hall is vice president of learning and development at Simulation Studios.
